In September over one hundred craft practitioners, researchers and theorists from throughout the world will converge on Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen to discuss the fast changing and challenging world of craft.

As a major international conference, Challenging Craft is set to become one of the most significant events in the crafts calendar of recent years, providing a unique insight into the new concerns of craft practitioners, and the changing nature of their practice.

Internationally renowned jeweller and designer Gijs Bakker of Droog Design, is the event’s keynote speaker, and will present his own insights into the radical shifts taking place in craft practice. His vision will be complemented by an extensive range of international papers which the conference has attracted, from makers and researchers all of whom are eager to present and debate their contribution to the ‘revolution’.

Delegates from Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Denmark, USA, Canada, Nova Scotia, India, Taiwan, Norway, Sweden and the UK have registered for the event.

The submissions deal broadly with the four conference themes:
• Craft articulating culture,
• Collaborative and hybrid practice – challenging traditional craft boundaries
• Craft and new technology – implications for practice 
• Challenging craft education.

Craft articulating culture features prominently and ‘Weaving the Murray: mapping connection and loss’ is one paper that exemplifies the quality of submissions on this theme. Professor Kay Lawrence writes that in 2001 Australia celebrated the ‘Centenary of Federation’, an anniversary that marked the uniting of the Australian states under a federal government.

In South Australia an official Centenary of Federation project, Weaving the Murray brought seven Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists together to weave a narrative based on the social and cultural history of the Murray River, the driest continent’s largest watercourse.
 
This paper outlines how the artists used Indigenous and non-Indigenous stories and textile traditions as strategies for recalling the past history of the river to explore issues of identity, community and loss in the present. It also discusses how the artists negotiated some of the tensions inherent in commemorating, through intercultural art practice, an event that forged national identity through the exclusion of Indigenous Australians.

Research on the cultural dimensions and significance of craft practice will be presented alongside research that considers craft’s digital revolution. This includes the ‘connectivity project’ that uses the web to link sixteen international makers to create work for digital manufacture using rapid prototyping. The results will be exhibited for the first time at the conference (see wwwconnectivityproject.com).

The Challenging Craft conference is being hosted by the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and will take place at the School of Management, Garthdee Road, Aberdeen from 8 to 10 September 2004.  The conference fee is £250 and £150 for full time students.  For further information visit www.challengingcraft.org

The conference is being organised by the Making Sense research group at Grays School of Art in collaboration with the Crafts Council, European Academy of Design and the Scottish Arts Council.