<p dir="ltr">Additional planned Keynote Speakers for Making Futures 2024 include material designer and systems thinker Elissa Brunato, CEO and founder of <a href="https://www.radiantmatter.co/">Radiant Matter</a>, London. Other featured speakers will include Nancy Diniz, co-founder of <a href="https://www.biomatters.org/">bioMATTERS</a>; and Benito Juarez Velez, founder of Floating Fab Lab Amazon and founder of FabLab Peru and the Latin American Fab Lab Network.</p> <p dir="ltr">Tickets for Making Futures will go on sale Monday 19 August 2024 at <a href="https://makingfutures.org.uk/">https://makingfutures.org.uk/</a>. </p> <p dir="ltr">In addition to being President and CEO of the Fab Foundation, Making Futures Keynote Speaker Sherry Lassiter acts as Director for the Fab Lab Outreach Program at the Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT, and is one of the architects of the MIT global initiative for field on-site technology development, the Fab Lab program. A Fab Lab is a rapid prototyping platform for technical education, innovation and personal expression. The Fab Lab network includes over 2700 digital fabrication facilities in 135+ countries.</p> <p dir="ltr">Lassiter is President of the Fab Foundation, a non-profit committed to building technical capacity, improving individuals’ abilities to develop themselves and their communities and bringing access to tools and knowledge that cultivate and support innovative practices. Summer 2024 Lassiter is hosting the <a href="https://fab24.fabevent.org/">FAB24 México</a> conference and symposium, a global convening of creative and innovative thinkers who share a passion for digital fabrication and technology.</p> <p dir="ltr">Lassiter's long history at the forefront of imagining how new technologies shape human relationships and societies provides an important context for the ninth iteration of Making Futures, whose own history shares with Lassiter a desire to look beyond the instrumentalisation of new technology to the transformative impact it has on our social and cultural lives.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">Making Futures participants will explore how encounters with current material research and innovation begin to alter both the formal and conceptual expectations of craft, opening traditional techniques to the physical, chemical, biological and environmental dimensions of physical matter beyond object-making, to take a more holistic view of how materiality shapes and influences human experience. </p> <p dir="ltr">In an active, cross-sector programme of presentations, demonstrations and material masterclasses, the 2024 biennial conference will explore social and material innovations, individual and global fabrication, analogue and digital technologies, knowledge production and exchange, archival and experimental processes, collaborations and partnerships, projects and products, studio pedagogies and practices which will influence the future of craft as a material practice and as a cultural idea. </p> <p dir="ltr">Arts University Plymouth offers academics and students a unique interdisciplinary ecosystem of materials, processes, and technologies, spanning cutting-edge facilities including Fab Lab Plymouth and a comprehensive Materials Lab that supports innovative practices in hot glass, ceramics, and biomaterials.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">Associate Professor Stephanie Owens said: “This year we’re evolving the focus of Making Futures to balance the disciplines of contemporary craft and material innovation. As with all forms of creative practice, the boundary of what is considered ‘craft’ is fugitive—adapting and transforming as we look with urgency at how the deep, historical knowledge and artisan traditions associated with craft might provide contemporary society with an alternative to our current habits of consumption and enable us to live more respectfully with each other, the natural world and our planet. </p> <p dir="ltr">“The power of crafting, or of shaping the physical realm, is often juxtaposed with computation and technology, but as distributive manufacture, distance learning and platform economies have shown, the interface between computation and matter have introduced not merely new, more efficient, sustainable supply chains, but have begun to generate a new language of form and experience that is meaningful beyond craft. This language is symptomatic of a more intertwined creative practice that unites art, design, computation and science in a shared field of human agency and ingenuity. “</p> <p dir="ltr">Since its establishment in 2009, Making Futures has been a pivotal platform for dialogue around contemporary craft and maker movements and how they relate to the creative industries in 21st century society. The three-day 2024 conference will encourage a rich exchange of ideas across various domains, including individual and global fabrication, and the evolving synergy of art, design, computation, and science. Making Futures 2024 stands as a crucial platform for examining the future of craft, not merely as a practice but as a transformative cultural idea.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">This iteration of Making Futures poses pivotal questions about craft's engagement with material science innovations, ecological challenges, and the quest for a sustainable future. The organisers are seeking contributions from designers, artists, makers, educators, scholars, policymakers, scientists, and any creator or curator of culture on the topics covered in the upcoming conference focused on areas of material practice and craft that are breaking new ground.</p> <p dir="ltr">Six conference tracks for Making Futures 2024 have been selected:</p> <p><br /></p><ol><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Craftsmanship, Artisanal Knowledge and the Aesthetics of Place</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Rethinking the Relationship Between Body, Fashion and Ornament</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Generative Materials? Toward a Convergence of AI and Matter</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Softsystems – Biology, Networks and Post-natural Frameworks for Co-creativity</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Optimising Craft Techniques for Sustainable Alternatives to Extractive Practices </p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Futurecraft – Pathways for Art, Design and Materials Science Research Collaborations </p></li></ol> <p><br /></p> <p dir="ltr">The conference will include presentations from leading experts in their fields, panel discussions, workshops, masterclasses and artisans-in-residence, culminating in later publication of the next Making Futures Journal to collate key learnings and outcomes from the event.</p> <p dir="ltr">Contributions to Making Futures 2024 from experts at Arts University Plymouth will include sessions from Fab Lab Plymouth Manager and Knowledge Exchange Coordinator, Ben Mundy, relaunching the arts university’s expanded and enhanced Fab Lab, and detailing Plymouth’s journey to become the UK’s first city to join the <a href="https://fab.city/">Fab City</a> network, in 2019. </p> <p dir="ltr">Visit <a href="https://makingfutures.org.uk/">https://makingfutures.org.uk/</a> for more information. Ticket options include full three-day tickets with participation in masterclasses and workshops, single day tickets, plus discounts for independent practitioners and Arts University Plymouth staff members and students.<br /></p>