Editorial: Craft and the Handmade: Making the intangible visible

In November 2014, the Department of Fashion and Textiles at the University of Huddersfield hosted the conference Transition: Re-thinking Textiles and Surfaces. The conference sought to scrutinize current and future developments in textile research and its applications within the wider context of the creative industries. With keynote presentations from Professor Becky Earley, Professor Jane Harris, Dr Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu, publisher David Shah and Trend Union forecaster Philip Fimmano, this two day event brought together a myriad of theoretical perspectives and material approaches through four distinct tracks: Science and Technology, Sustainable Futures, Craft and the Handmade and Enterprise/Industry/Business. This guest edited issue of Craft Research focuses on Craft and the Handmade and features articles that were first delivered as papers within this track

GoGlobal Rural-Urban

This is a book of edited articles and design projects from five years of collaborative international design projects in developed and developing economies, including China, Thailand, Ghana and Japan. Part One contains articles on initiatives including e-commerce models for developing economies, massclusivity and craft design. Part Two is dedicated to design solutions for China’s rural-urban migration issues, which affect 55 million people a year. The project enhances knowledge about the application of design thinking to national-level issues connecting policy to implementation, extending design activity into large-scale social and economic areas. The book follows an exhibition of design outcomes in London and Beijing (2010). Hall developed his chapter (‘Go Global: Ghana’) from a conference paper given at the ‘International Association of Societies of Design Research Conference’, South Korea (2009) and further expanded as a book chapter (with Barker) entitled ‘e-Artisans: Contemporary design for the global market’ in Global Design History (2011). ‘eArtisans’ researched a proposed e-commerce model linking designer-craftsmen with a global Internet sale and distribution model for African countries. The originality lay in proposing and testing knowledge, through design collaborations, in a combination of e-commerce enterprise models; it was significant in deploying the proposed model in an experimental educational initiative. The research was based on previous experience of design, craft and enterprise projects in Thailand and China, and aligned with a creative economies report by UNESCO (2008). The context was a collaboration at the KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana, where action-based research methods resulted in a case study illustrating cultural transfer. Support and partnership were also provided by Aid To Artisans, the British Council and Africa 53. A vital aspect was the discovery of how an e-commerce model changed design concepts and creative proposals. The GoGlobal project has continued with an edited publication, Designing Social City Experiences (Jin Nam and Hall 2013)

An aesthetic understanding of the craft sector

This paper evaluates the contribution of aesthetics to our understanding of the craft sector within the creative industries. Aesthetics make a dual contribution in terms of its original interpretation as an artistic factor relating to beauty, and also can be viewed in terms of the different styles of managing shaped by the owner/manager of the craft enterprise. In addition, creativity provides the artistic enterprise with competitive advantage, resulting in innovative products. Previous research on the creative industries has tended to follow a conventional path, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative data constructed from in-depth interviews and large scale surveys. This paper conceptualises the essence of the creative industries, drawing on examples from craft in order to reach an understanding of the aesthetic value and impact of the sector

Designing craft research: joining emotion and knowledge

This paper considers how both craft and research can be joined in the enterprise of craft research. The rationale is that craft research is still relatively new compared to mainstream design research and craft being linked to the creation of artefacts as a source of experience and emotion, craft is not usually associated with research and the production of knowledge. The paper discusses the emerging need for creative research in the crafts based on sensibilities of material understanding and human values, which contrast with the current strictures of research. Drawing on current models of design research and knowledge, the paper proposes experiential knowledge as the unifying conceptual underpinning of both. The outcome and contribution of the paper is a better understanding of the relationship of craft and research, and of the value of research for advancing craft as a discipline that is viable and relevant for the future

Higher education stimulating creative enterprise

This report summarises the research undertaken by the Business & Community School at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA), analysing ways that higher ediucation (HEIs) can support, and indeed stimulate, the creative economy. The research, in collaboration with the Arts University College Bournemouth (AUCB) and the University of Winchester, serves as a mere snapshot of the numerous ways that Universities engage with the diverse industries under the 'creative' nomenclature and of the very real and poistive ways that the higher education sector contributes to the growth of the creative economy in thhe UK