Digital Crafting: Re-evaluating Promises and Pitfalls
- Submitting institution
-
Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Oakley2
- Type
- E - Conference contribution
- DOI
-
-
- Title of conference / published proceedings
- Making Futures Korea
- First page
- 1
- Volume
- -
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- -
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This paper, delivered at the Making Futures Korea conference (part of the 2015 Cheongju International Craft Biennale), explores the intersection of contemporary crafting practices and digital technologies in the UK. It considers how crafters’ professional self-identities influence their relations towards differing communities of practice and their attitude to, and engagement with, digital processes. It then compares the UK situation with Asian examples, identifying commonalities and disparities. The paper drew on three years of research, begun in preparation for the first Digital Crafting workshop convened for Making Futures 3 in 2013. The research included site visits to studios, fab-labs, workshops and factories where digital technologies were employed alongside, or integrated with, traditional manual making practices. Oakley also conducted interviews with professional craft practitioners about their attitudes to, and experiences of, digital crafting and undertook a review of canonical craft texts and recent academic writing on the nature and value of crafting. The project provided a unique overview of the role of contemporary craft practice in digital manufacturing innovation.
The findings informed Digital Crafting 2.0, Oakley’s follow-on workshop at Making Futures 4 in 2015, and an associated article, ‘Digital Crafting: Defining the field in 2015’, published in Making Futures Journal. The insights gained were also disseminated in presentations, including ‘Intelligent Making at the RCA’, delivered to California State University Long Beach arts faculty in 2016, and ‘The Value(s) of Crafting in the 21st Century’, a public presentation at the Thailand Creative and Design Centre in Bangkok in 2019. The research led to an invitation from the Crafts Council to sit on the advisory board for their 2016 report Innovation Through Craft: Opportunities for Growth, and informed two successful AHRC grant applications: Extending the Potential of the Digitally Printed Ceramic Surface (2015-2017) and Sustainable Materials in the Creative Industries (2020-2021).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
