The papers in this volume represent the results of the second Making Futures international research conference held in September 2011 at Dartington Hall, on the Dartington Hall Estate near Totnes in south Devon, UK.

Making Futures is about materials, agency, transformation—personal and social—and the search for new grounds and understandings of how the contemporary crafts are practiced in the context of developing global environmental and sustainability agendas.

The 2011 conference explored the idea that these emerging agendas interrupt and restage the possibilities of craft in fundamental ways that are important to makers, their audiences, and to society more generally. These agendas present opportunities to redefine and reconstitute the crafts as less marginalised, more centrally productive forces in society, through new formulations and re-articulations of practices, identities, positions and markets.

A lively and significant sustainability and ethical practice debate is taking place within craft practitioner circles, supported by a wide range of practice-based initiatives which are striving to re-articulate and re-formulate craft practices, identities and audiences. These efforts represent a level of engagement that modestly, yet fundamentally, operate as a change-making - literally making the future, and whose wider horizons are potentially charged with global significance.

The Making Futures 2011 programme sought to explore crafts critical value as a “change-maker” through six thematic strands and one research workshop. Thirty-eight presentations were curated into these seven conference sessions following peer review. Of the thirty-five papers submitted, a selection of six essays are included in this volume. The remaining contributions can be found in the 'Conference Proceedings' section of the Journal. 

Making Futures: The Crafts in the Context of Emerging Global Sustainability Agendas. Vol 2. ISSN 2042-1664

Cover image from A Personal View of the Development of Studio Glass in the UK - Catherine Hough

The republished volumes of the Making Futures Journal 2009-2019 showcase six articles from each conference. We invite the reader to cast an eye over these articles that the editorial board felt best represented each year.

Any reference to former institutions (notably Plymouth College of Art/PCA) remain unedited in past editions of the Making Futures Journal for historical accuracy.