International research conference on contemporary craft and maker movements as change agents in 21st-century society, exploring sustainability and material innovation.
Making Futures™ returns to Arts University Plymouth from Thursday 29 to Saturday 31 October 2026, running 08:30 to 17:00 each day. It's the university's international research platform for contemporary craft and maker movements, first convened back in 2009. The whole thing treats craft as a 'change agent' in 21st-century society, bringing together scholars, makers, artists, designers and educators to look at material practices through the lens of sustainability, community regeneration and technical innovation.
This year's edition is titled Feeling Materials: Care, Reciprocity & Responsive Matter. It takes a materials-ontology approach, asking how our emotional encounters with materials and objects shape the forms, interfaces and systems we create, and framing matter as having its own agency alongside the natural and living world. It's a multidisciplinary hub that's grown over the years, with submissions arriving from 17 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Making Futures is one of the platforms underpinning the university's Centre for Circular Materials, chaired by Professor Stephanie Owens. If you can't make it in person, key sessions are recorded and made available online afterwards. There's also a partnership with Intellect that will produce a special edition of Craft Research dedicated to the conference theme, so the conversations carry on long after the event finishes.
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It runs from Arts University Plymouth, Tavistock Place, Plymouth, PL4 9AT, from 08:30 to 17:00 on Thursday 29, Friday 30 and Saturday 31 October. Tickets range from £100 to £275.
Date
29 October – 31 October
08:30
Price
Paid
Recommended Age
+18 years
