Making Futures™ research conference returns featuring an international programme of makers, educators and innovators redefining craft as a living system

<p>Developed from submissions received from 17 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas, the programme will explore how care and reciprocity can reshape relationships between people, materials and the natural world.</p> <p>Living systems designer Zena Holloway, founder of bio-design studio <a href="https://www.rootfull.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rootfull</a>, has been announced as a keynote speaker. Further keynote speakers and programme details will be published at <a href="http://makingfutures.org.uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">makingfutures.org.uk</a>.</p>

<p dir="ltr">After a 25-year career in underwater photography and creative direction, including global campaigns for Nike, Speedo and Umbro, <a href="https://zenaholloway.com/about">Zena Holloway</a> began researching biomaterials in 2018 as her awareness of ocean plastic pollution deepened.</p> <p dir="ltr">Through Rootfull, she has pioneered a process that guides plant roots through hand-carved beeswax templates. As the roots grow, they weave together to create textiles, lighting and sculptural objects, bringing craft, biology and horticulture into the same creative practice.</p> <p dir="ltr">Holloway’s work has been recognised with a scholarship from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust and an Innovate UK Creative Catalyst grant. <a href="https://www.rootfull.com/collabs/phoebe-english">Rootfull has also collaborated with British slow-fashion designer Phoebe English</a> to create a stitch-free dress grown from plant roots.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">Making Futures™ 2026 will connect material-led creative practice with science, design education, enterprise and environmental research.</p> <p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.ascus.org.uk/">ASCUS Art &amp; Science</a>, the Edinburgh-based non-profit organisation behind Scotland’s first publicly accessible art-science laboratory, will contribute to the programme. Founded in 2008, ASCUS has facilitated work by internationally recognised artists and art-science pioneers including Oron Catts, Marta de Menezes and Susan Aldworth, while helping creative practitioners learn to work directly with biological materials.</p> <p dir="ltr">Financial Times writer and cultural place-shaping strategist <a href="https://nla.london/contributors/yasmin-jones-henry">Yasmin Jones-Henry</a> will chair a discussion on education as infrastructure for regenerative and circular systems of making, bringing together voices from Crafts Council, Future Fabrics Expo, CQ Studio, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at University of the Arts London and D-Lab.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">At The Box on 30 October, <a href="https://makingfutures.org.uk/the-affective-artifact/">The Affective Artifact</a> will bring Making Futures into direct contact with Plymouth’s maritime history.</p> <p dir="ltr">Professor Stephanie Owens, Professor Simon Werrett of UCL and Terah Walkup of The Box will lead a cross-disciplinary reading of a late 19th-century diver’s suit made from rubber and fibre, laced with salt and scarred through use. Contributors from the humanities and sciences will explore how the object’s materials carry history, cultural value and emotional meaning.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">New for 2026, the <strong>Futures Forum</strong> will give researchers and practitioners a space to test and explore new material-led ideas that are still taking shape.</p> <p dir="ltr">Participants are invited to give a rapid three-slide pitch before receiving live audience feedback and joining one-to-one clinics with a cross-sector panel of academic and industry experts. The winning idea will have an opportunity to develop through collaboration with Cornwall-based <a href="https://www.innovationnursery.com/">Innovation Nursery</a> and to be showcased to organisations working across materials science and design.</p> <p dir="ltr">The session will be moderated by John Brown, Managing Director of Innovation Nursery with support from award winning bio designer Aurélie Fontan, as well as local business innovators who will form the panel. <br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">Making Futures will mark the first major international convening of Arts University Plymouth’s <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/research/centre-for-circular-materials">Centre for Circular Materials</a>, building on its institutional launch earlier in 2026.</p> <p dir="ltr">Across three days, external researchers, practitioners and partners will be able to engage with the Centre’s work and explore new collaborations around circular, regenerative and bioregional materials in creative practice and emerging cross-disciplinary research. </p> <p dir="ltr">Professor Stephanie Owens, Dean of Arts, Design and Media and Chair of the Centre for Circular Materials at Arts University Plymouth, said: "This iteration of Making Futures is significant for the turn it is making toward novel approaches and understanding of craft as a material extension and expression of the living world rather than cut off from it. The slightly provocative premise of looking at our emotional relationship to matter is an opportunity to examine how we might view nature as a co-author in creative endeavour, and in doing so, adopt a new cultural paradigm that considers caring for the planet an aesthetic act as well as an environmental one."<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">Making Futures 2026 will take place in person at Arts University Plymouth from <strong>Thursday 29 to Saturday 31 October 2026</strong>. Key sessions will be recorded and made available online after the conference.</p> <p dir="ltr"><a href="https://makingfutures.org.uk/registration/">Register for Making Futures 2026</a>.<br /></p>