ABSTRACT
The theme Craftwork as Problem Solving goes to the very heart of the craft enterprise, as the breadth and depth of the contributions to this chapter make clear. Making Futures is a biennial international conference that seeks to reappraise craft and the renewed sense of possibility surrounding it. Moving between the individual and the social, the personal and the collective, it explores what it means to make: personally, artistically, economically, and politically. In doing so, Making Futures implicates craft in wider ecological, social, and cultural agendas; and it develops encounters with philosophical thought, sociology and anthropology, technology, economic and innovation theory, with students of consumer trends and behaviours, and with craft education. At the centre of this multifaceted agenda is a symmetrical figure of craft as a type of 'thinking-making/making-thinking' which Professor Trevor H. J. Marchand's 2013 workshop on Craftwork as Problem Solving squarely addressed.
