'Crafting Futures' seeks ways to revalue the knowledge and skills of crafts and tap into their potential for addressing current challenges in sustainability, innovation, inclusion, lifelong learning, and urban transformation. The project examines the assessment & validation mechanisms by which crafts knowledge and know-how (CKK) is evaluated in order to enhance its added value for the economy and society in Belgium.
'Crafting Futures' is developed by an interdisciplinary team from UAntwerpen and KU Leuven, in collaboration with the Schools of Art, KASK in Gent, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and Sint Lucas Antwerpen. Moreover, the project is realized in close collaboration with partners from the field. During the course of the project, three stakeholder working groups are set up, based on specific themes and craft contexts: crafts education, maker spaces, and finally, policy and entrepreneurship.
This unique academic and field consortium brings together a broad range of expertise ranging from pedagogy, critical heritage and economy studies, anthropology, design sciences, cultural management, law, to hands-on art and design practices anchored in artistic research.
By combining critical analysis with an action-based approach, the project will prototype and develop new models for validating crafts in educational, policy-making, and economic contexts. This will result in new learning formats, classification systems and typologies, legal instruments, business models, and policy recommendations for field practitioners, policy makers and educational organisms.
More information: www.craftingfutures.be
With the support of FWO / SBO
From the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, 'Crafting Futures' is coordinated by Vivi Touloumidi, and Andrea Cammarosano is involved as artistic action-researcher.
Vivi Touloumidi contributes to the project via her intersectional role as a research-led practitioner in the crafts, an active artist in the field of contemporary jewellery and a docent and researcher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. In 2022 she obtained a PhD in the Arts in collaboration with the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA), where she investigated the agency of wearable craft to evoke sociopolitical discourse. For 'Crafting Futures', she is eager to investigate the support systems needed for the validation of craft knowledges within and outside institutions. Moreover, she is interested in exploring strategies for the cultivation of these knowledges within educational and artistic environments with the aim to challenge the known patterns of operation and understanding of craft.
Andrea Cammarosano brings a practice-based research approach that draws from his experience in both design and education. His focus is on creative and productive networks, looking at how exchanges within these networks can strengthen collaboration. Through his PhD research at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, he explored the dynamics of collaborative networks within schools and the intersection between education and industry.
In the 'Crafting Futures' project, he applies these insights to hybrid networks, such as maker spaces and collectives, where different sectors and actors come together. He is particularly interested in exploring how projects can be scaled up without compromising creativity, individual motivation, and organizational sustainability. Another key area of focus is co-creation within these hybrid networks, where creative, technical, and social elements intersect. His goal is to develop and test business models that can support and sustain this diversity and complexity, while ensuring scalability and economic sustainability.
(image: Andrea Cammarosano – photo: Chiara Amico)
