An opportunity for Labour?

It’s hard work being a Labour Party supporter. I suspect Obama supporters feel the same. Indeed, the failure of the left and the centre left (or in the US case, the liberals) to advance any credible progressive alternative is dispiriting in the extreme. What is all the more curious is that there IS the starting point of a progressive alternative staring them all in the face – but since it has not emerged from the increasingly insular world that party politics is now conducted in, then it has simply not been noticed.

The makings of an alternative are to be found in maker culture and active consumerism: in craft cafes, hacker spaces and especially in IKEA. It addresses some profound issues concerning how we innovate, how we create sustainable enterprise, and how we link this to a social agenda. It provides solutions for educational underachievement, models for urban and rural regeneration, and strategies to address critical skills shortages in fields as diverse as plumbing and programming. It demands that we rethink our conception of work, in order to make better use of the one vital resource that humans are provided with: our creativity. It connects with something very deep within us all: an inherent desire to make things for ourselves. And it requires that we ditch the one thing that ties us to redundant notions of our future: our labour. Perhaps that is the left’s problem.

What is interesting and significant is that this ‘new alternative’ has in recent weeks been the subject of coverage in UK and US business media, national media in the US, New Scientist, together with the technology and eco-activist blogosphere – but aside from one or two pieces in The Guardian, the Left’s media appears far more interested in the Occupy movement. Sorry, but I’ve spent time at St Paul’s and all I see is yet another marginal protest that the Left is so fond of.

Below is a summarised commentary on some of this recent coverage, prior to working it up into a more resolved piece of writing. I have emphasised recent writing rather than more extensive academic literature, such as David Gauntlett’s recent excellent book. The argument threading through it is that the emergent maker economy is of critical significance in the development of an alternative economic model that is capable of addressing economic regeneration, social renewal and individual fulfilment. While we have in the past been defined by our labours, in the future we will be defined by our works.

The indie capitalist revolution

In December 2011, The Economist reported on the significance of the maker movement under the headline “more than just digital quilting”. It recognised that its roots lie in digital culture at the confluence of the open source movement and the new technologies such as Arduino and MakerBot’s 3D printers. Setting its scene at the New York Maker Faire, The Economist explained how “this show and an even bigger one in Silicon Valley, held every May, are the most visible manifestations of what has come to be called the “maker” movement. It started on America’s West Coast but is spreading around the globe: a Maker Faire was held in Cairo in October.”

Physical spaces and tools are part of the maker movement’s landscape, along with online communities. There is a rich pluralism as hackers and corporates coexist alongside business startups, social enterprises, hobbyists and venture capitalists. In its conclusion, The Economist draws a pertinent parallel:

 “The parallel with the hobbyist computer movement of the 1970s is striking. In both cases enthusiastic tinkerers, many on America’s West Coast, began playing with new technologies that had huge potential to disrupt business and society. Back then the machines manipulated bits; now the action is in atoms. This has prompted predictions of a new industrial revolution, in which more manufacturing is done by small firms or even by individuals. “The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit,” writes Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine.

“It is easy to laugh at the idea that hobbyists with 3D printers will change the world. But the original industrial revolution grew out of piecework done at home, and look what became of the clunky computers of the 1970s. The maker movement is worth watching.”

Also writing in December, Bruce Nussbaum – a former editor of Business Week – presents four reasons why the future of capitalism is homegrown, small scale, and independent. Indie capitalism, Nussbaum argues, is “a maker system of economics based on creating new value, not trading old value. It embraces all the strains of maker culture–food, indie music, DIY, craft, 3-D digital fabrication, bio-hacking, app enabling, CAD modeling, robotics, tinkering. Making is not a rare act performed by a few but a routine happening in which just about everyone participates.”

In contrast to The Economist, Nussbaum differentiates the culture of this new movement from the West Coast start up scene of the 70s that spawned Apple and Microsoft. He favours the term indie capitalism “because it captures more of the social context and values of this new economy. I think it is sufficiently different from the entrepreneurial, startup culture of Stanford/Silicon Valley to warrant its own name. The term feels more 21st century, while ‘startup’ sounds, well, 20th century. It’s socially focused, not technology focused, more designer/artist-centric than engineering-centric. I especially like ‘indie’ because the indie music scene reflects many of the distributive and social structures of this emergent form of capitalism. It’s no accident that Portland and New York have vibrant indie music scenes and are the centers of a rising new indie capitalism.” In Nussbaum’s, view, the time is right for this indie capitalism to usher in an indie economics and indie politics given that – from Occupy to the Tea Party – finance or ‘predatory’ capitalism is under attack. And so is high street retail capitalism.

In a blogpost entitled why 2012 will be year of the artist-entrepreneur, Michael Wolf argues that with distribution chains collapsing vertically across video, music and books, as online storefronts become the entire distribution chain, so this expands the role of the artist-entrepreneur who distributes themselves. “No doubt, the vast majority of economic wealth is still distributed through large corporate media, but as new technologies enable artists to reach consumers directly through push-button creation and distribution, there is a movement afoot. Expect this movement to expand in 2012 as more artists take control of their own economic destinies and become part of the artist-entrepreneur generation.”

Writing recently in the New York Times, William Deresiewicz frames this development even more profoundly: “The small business is the idealized social form of our time. Our culture hero is not the artist or reformer, not the saint or scientist, but the entrepreneur. (Think of Steve Jobs, our new deity.) Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurship comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.”

The Left almost certainly has a problem with the maker movement because it is bound up with entrepreneurialism. Which is strange, because many of the new entrepreneurs seemingly have no problems with politically progressive concerns and ideals. Yes, this is is the age of the business plan and the start up. Young people especially are doing it for themselves in terms of employment creation. Now, in part this is because many have no other choice; around 30 percent of new entrepreneurs in the US go into business because there is no other option for work. But whether reluctant or willing, increasing numbers of entrepreneurs are doing it less for the money and more to make a difference.

Danny Alexander, a design entrepreneur writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, takes issue with those who see entrepreneurship as purely in terms of wealth creation: “For many of us, entrepreneurship is our anger, our edge, and our ego. It is our social movement… I’m an entrepreneur because I see fundamental problems with society and want to be active in creating solutions.” Closer to home, there are dynamic new enterprises such as Snook which are pursuing a new politics and social vision through entrepreneurial action.

Labour isn’t working – the value of doing it yourself

Throughout the world, there is a generation of highly educated, aspirational young people with a strong sense of a social vision who have been failed by both labour markets and labour parties. Put simply, there are no jobs and no political vision about how to change the world in a progressive direction. The only solution to both problems is to do it yourself. Entrepreneurialism also addresses a third problem: most jobs suck.

In a piece entitled How British workers are losing the power to think, Guardian correspondent Aditya Chakrabortty has drawn on research that strongly suggests an erosion of autonomy in many occupations. “Since the mid-80s, academics have been carrying out regular skills surveys, asking detailed questions of thousands of employees. In 1986… 72% of professionals felt they had a great deal of independence in doing their jobs. By 2006, that had plummeted to just 38%.” Some researchers are suggesting a future workforce in which only 10-15% will have permission to think. “The rest of us will merely carry out their decisions; what the academics call ‘digital Taylorism’, in which graduates will end up on the white-collar equivalent of a factory line.” The options appear to be useful work (through creative entrepreneurialism) versus useless toil (by selling our increasingly devalued labour power). Put simply, whether creating a livelihood or building bookcases, people value doing it themselves. If you want proof – go to IKEA.

The IKEA effect has been documented and argued by behavioural economist Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School. In this month’s New Scientist, an article entitled The hard way: Our odd desire to do it ourselves explained how Norton and his colleagues set up experiments in which people were asked to assemble IKEA furniture or fold origami or build Lego sets. “The participants then had to bid small sums for the products of their labour, or for a custom- or expert-made equivalent. The results were impressive. People bid considerably more for their own creations, even when they were plain old IKEA boxes. When it came to origami, they stumped up nearly as much for their own forlorn frog or bird as for the same animal folded by an expert – even though other participants subsequently rated their efforts as ‘nearly worthless crumpled paper’”. The New Scientist piece describes other research that cumulatively demonstrates that the things we make we value far more – regardless of how well we make them.

Crafting the creative society

One of New Labour’s many problems was the incredibly narrow way that it viewed creativity, reducing it to the questionable notion of creative industries. The whole point was that the UK was to build up a particular set of consumer industries that required specific skills and knowledge that would be supplied through the labour market. Built on a theoretical bedrock that drew heavily from Richard Florida’s Creative Class thesis, this drove policy at both national and local government. There are three central problems with the creative industry emphasis. First, it is highly centralised: necessarily London will act as the key focus for such industries. Second, it is very fragile: the experience of the computer games industry in Dundee is evidence of that. Third, it is culturally defined by Florida’s Creative Class: DIY culture in north Wales or knitting in Shetland does not feature in its metropolitan landscape. As such, the creative economy as defined is exclusive.

Crafting an inclusive creative society demands a wholescale rethinking of education, work and the processes of civic society. Libby Brooks, writing in The Guardian, makes the following case:

“A recession invites fundamental reassessment of the place of work – and leisure – in our lives. Practically, this means recognising that teaching a tradable, portable skill is one of the best ways to lift people out of poverty. Philosophically, it invites an acceptance that a trade-off between hamster-wheel presenteeism and mollifying consumption has never been good for us and is not feasible in this economic climate. Crucially, craft is egalitarian. While some in the Labour party appear bent on resuscitating the canard of meritocracy, which divides the gifted few from the unexceptional mass, craft reminds us of the significance of equality of outcome, rather than of opportunity. Everyone shares the capacity to develop a skill, based on decent teaching, application and time – not raw talent.”

The question is, can Labour (or indeed The Left) envisage an egalitarian future in which people craft their own lives?

The Wedgwood Museum faces selloff to pay £134m pension debt after court ruling

You don’t need to have a passion for pots to appreciate why the Wedgwood Museum represents the crown jewels of our industrial heritage. Josiah Wedgwood was responsible for some of the key innovations that drove industrialisation and design, and whose vision for technological progress went hand-in-hand with social progress. His was a vision of socially responsible capitalism that we could benefit from revisiting today.

The Wedgwood Museum in Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent is a unique factory-based collection and archive that tells the story of Wedgwood’s contribution to our age. And what precisely is that contribution? Well, to get well made, durable, beautifully designed crockery onto tables Josiah Wedgwood undertook painstaking materials research into new ceramic bodies, he invented new decorative techniques, he created the profession of the designer, he built one of the world’s first factories, he invented the idea of market segmentation and pioneered many of the essential principles of today’s marketing. ‘Buy one, get one free’ was a Wedgwood innovation. Not many people know that. He brought science and art into industry in a unique, powerful and visionary way.

He invested his wealth in Britain’s canal system, and built proper homes for the new working class he had created, driven by a paternalistic concern for his employees. A passionate slavery abolitionist, he produced cameos with an enslaved black figure on a white background above the legend “Am I Not A Man And A Brother?” Soon becoming the fashion of the day, Wedgwood was the first to enable us to wear our issue-based politics on our sleeves, or around our necks. After Josiah’s death, his granddaughter married Charles Darwin – the Darwins being longstanding family friends – and the Wedgwood inheritance bought Darwin the time to write his theory of evolution.

His ambition, to give pottery “an elegance of form” embedded craft aesthetic and processes within the new technologies of his age – in much the same way as Steve Jobs achieved two centuries later. Like Jobs, but far more fundamentally, he redefined design and its management for a new age of change.

Today, every innovator, designer, industrialist, scientist, craft maker and entrepreneur is standing on the shoulders of this giant. His significance cannot be over-stated. To achieve his “elegance of form” required building a whole new infrastructure for manufacture, commerce and culture. “Father of English potters” is an epithet that tells only a fraction of his story and significance.

The company that bears his name went into administration in 2009, and the brand is today owned by a New York based private equity firm, with Wedgwood employing only a few hundred workers producing top-end products. This followed some catastrophically inept management in the company in its latter years. I should know: I spent an interesting lunchtime in the company of Wedgwood’s Board. They hauled me in because I had said on BBC TV some fairly damning (but very true) things about the paucity of their design management, and how it was leading directly to factory closures. In short, Wedgwood’s problems in the mid-1990s was nothing to do with cheap imports, rather its key challenge was with expensive imports. Analysis of trade statistics showed that they were losing market share in the top-end, design-led markets. This of course they denied. While they employed some exemplary designers, the skills of these talented individuals were being exercised in a strategic black hole. A passion for pots? It was my view that the bosses knew the meaning of neither.

I knew I was right when lunch was served. It was horrible; the kind of fare that even University caterers would avoid serving. Put simply, if you do not appreciate the joy of eating, how on earth can you create the world’s best tableware to share that joy with others? Clearly the days when pottery managers were people with “clay running in their veins” were over. These people were accountants, and they didn’t do that very well either.

Allowing Wedgwood to fold was above all damning to the generations of Stoke pottery workers and their families who had invested their working lives and their craft skills in the company. To be honest, the best pots in the world count for nothing if the people who make them, who believe in them, whose lives are defined by them, are simply thrown onto the industrial scrapheap. They deserve far better.

And that is the dilemma here. A blackhole in Wedgwood’s pension fund has led to a court ruling yesterday that the Wedgwood Museum should be sold off to raise the £134 million needed for the former employees’ pensions. Their jobs were taken away, and with it their dignity and self-worth. Their pension is all they have left.

But as important as their pensions, is our history. History only becomes meaningful if we study it, learn from it, draw lessons out from it to guide our future. It is the mark of a civilised society that we invest in understanding our past. The Wedgwood Museum is in UNESCO’s UK Memory of the World Register as, according to UNESCO, it represents a vital and significant part of our documentary heritage. It enables us to better understand and appreciate, not only Josiah Wedgwood’s remarkable innovations, but also those made by other potters and artists in creating an industry that defined its age and laid the ground for other industries to follow.

Without Josiah Wedgewood, it is doubtful that the UK ceramic and textile industries would have become the engines for industrialisation and world market dominance that they became. Without him, design would doubtless have gained a far lesser role in the UK economy, removing the foundations that today’s creative industries are built on. Without him, all the tricks of retail marketing we use today would have been pioneered in other countries. Without Josiah Wedgwood, who knows how we would earn our living in today’s world? I suppose we would always have slavery to fall back on.

THAT is why the Wedgwood Museum matters. And of course because it celebrates all those working people who gave their working lives to the pottery industry of Stoke-on-Trent.

As I’m not an accountant, I cannot answer the question of where the £134 million can be found to save the Museum and to pay the pensions. I understand such sums of money are trivial small change in the trading rooms of the City of London; perhaps it represents a couple of bankers’ bonuses. Perhaps some of our iconoclastic entrepreneurs could dig deep for the Museum? Step forward Sir Richard Branson. Shelve the tourist spacecraft, we have a time machine for you that will tell you far more about the world than 10 minutes in outer space will.

But I can answer the question of what it means if we allow this Museum to dissolve into private collections worldwide. It means we don’t really give a damn – about our history or the people who made it. I think we should. And we owe it to them to save it.

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

“My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.”

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

“Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography.”

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

My lecture to First Year students at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD) on 15 September emphasised how the achievement of relevance is a fundamental aim to their four years of study. Find what is relevant to you and to the world around you; use this to guide your creative strategies and developing technical skills. The lecture wove together the themes of relevance, creativity and craft – and at the end of this post are resources to help you explore these themes in more detail.

But why listen to me about how you should be thinking about your next four years at Art School? I asked five remarkably talented individuals to give you their advice, all of whom studied at DJCAD. One graduated only last year, while another graduated in 1993. Between them they embrace a range of creative disciplines. All of them are inspiring people, who needed no encouragement to share with you their advice on how to get the best from Art School.

James Donald is one of Scotland’s most successful weavers, selling his work all over the world – particularly in the United States. Based in Edinburgh he allies his creative practice to being joint-owner of the successful Concrete Wardrobe retail outlet. Here is a message from James to you:

Johanna Basford is a remarkably versatile illustrator who studied printed textiles at DJCAD. Apart from designing the catalogue for the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, she has acquired an enviable client roster across many different industries from Channel 4 to Absolut Vodka. Her blog post 50 things I wish I’d known in art school is required reading. But below is her personal message to new DJCAD students:

Lauren Currie is co-founder of Snook – a social innovation and service design company based in Glasgow. Studying both Product Design and the Master of Design course at DJCAD, Lauren’s career has begun with a remarkable start, and she is now running a company that has the Chinese Government among their clients.

Joanna Montgomery graduated in 2010 in Interactive Media Design, is Director of Little Riot whose Pillow Talk product has proved a viral sensation on YouTube, as we saw in the lecture. In exchange for her valuable advice, Joanna asks that you vote for Little Riot in a national competition, to make Pillow Talk a reality. I am sure you will support Joanna in this competition. It will take you a minute!

Kate Pickering studied Jewellery & Metal Design and the Master of Design at DJCAD. Since graduating she has established Vanilla Ink, a highly acclaimed initiative to bridge the gap for jewellery students into industry. Kate won funding from the NESTA Starter For Six scheme to launch her initiative. An accomplished teacher in jewellery and design, this is her advice to you:

Why not follow these designers on Twitter? This will help you keep up-to-date with air activities and give you more insights into their professional practices. All of them use Twitter as a key part of their professional practice. Click on their names to access their twitter stream: James Donald, Johanna Basford, Lauren Currie, Joanna Montgomery, Kate Pickering. You’ll also find me on Twitter. Once you have set up a Twitter account, then you can follow them.

Achieving relevance referred to a number of artists, designers and events that you may wish to explore further.

• The Power of Making exhibition currently at the V&A in London is definitely worth a visit and has attracted some very positive critical attention in the media.
• Brian Eno’s oblique strategies are a proven method of introducing new elements of chance into the creative process. They are available as a box of cards, an app, and as a website.
• Tracey Emin was referred to in terms of her approach to craft and printmaking, views that were expressed in an interview with her in 2010 in The Independent.
• The late Richard Hamilton exemplifies the artist/designer who transcends boundaries, and maintained a highly political and critical approach to his practice.

I was recently invited to chair the 1st conference organised by craftscotland entitled Craft Connected. This was held at the Collins Gallery in Glasgow on Saturday, 27 August 2011 and attracted a committed and lively audience of around 70 people. The conference was convened to explore how craft is connected: connected internationally, connected culturally, connected with industry and new audience, with public services, community initiatives and the wider society. We were fortunate in having a number of excellent speakers who explored different aspects of these connections and helped to provoke a spirited and wide-ranging discussion on how we take these issues forward. We were allowed to use part of the afternoon to discuss our Change Makers initiative and to develop ideas and proposals for the makers manifesto, which is described further below in the previous blog entry.

The conference was opened up by Garth Johnson from California whose blog extreme craft attracts considerable interest. He reminded us that craft can be transformative and it can also be a weapon. He wanted everyone at the conference to be a craft activist. His highly engaging presentation emphasised the relationship between craftivism and the DIY culture on one hand, and studio crafts on the other. He also made a call for a new decorative arts scholarship built on the world of feminist literary research.

Tom Hopkins Gibson described his own practice and stressed the importance of being part of a community. Having made a midlife shift into the crafts, his beautiful wood and porcelain pieces are sold by Liberty and Calvin Klein in New York. Through the success of his practice he is investing back in his community, transforming a disused industrial building in the middle of a former mining town into a craft centre. Tom’s contribution emphasised the importance of courage which lies at the heart of craft practice.

Contributions by Rebecca Davies from craftscotland and Laura Hamilton the Collins Gallery explored both the new opportunities presented by craftscotland and the professional needs of makers in dealing with curators and galleries. Certain shortcomings regarding the latter suggest that many craft makers see their practice as one solely of producing objects rather than developing and delivering a service. The issue of service was picked up in the afternoon by Lauren Currie from Snook whose inspiring talk on service design and its relevance to craft practice provoked considerable interest from the audience. She explained how, as a service designer, she used physical modelling as a powerful tool with clients to bring conversations to life and inspiring them to think through making. She argued that the role of a designer is not being in a studio anymore, it’s about going out into the streets and into communities. She laid down a challenge to the audience of unlocking their hidden and secret service.

Josiah Lockhart heads up the Grassmarket Community Project in Edinburgh. Founded in 1860, this project demonstrates how craft can support and sustain communities, and the importance of physical objects in expressing value and the values of those who make them. This case study complemented that of Muriel Murray from Castletown Heritage Society based in Thurso which has established traditional skills workshops, working with local schools and local communities. These workshops have been successful because they are embedded in both the local environment and the local community and its history.

An extensive discussion at the end of the afternoon identified a number of themes and ideas that should be embedded within the Makers’ Manifesto. These included the issue of education, and to promote different types of education, using diverse funding, that reconnects craft with children’s and adult learning. There was also discussion on the relationship between the trades and craft, together with exploring how craft could address issues of sustainability and the low carbon economy. Many ideas were presented and discussed concerning how craft can transform its profile by attracting diverse audiences to events such as Craft Connected. Perhaps the time of the craft community speaking to itself is over, we need to actively and urgently engage with the rest of the world.

Craftscotland will be writing up some of the outcomes of the event, and making video of some presentations available online shortly.

Makers in craft and design activities have a huge potential to contribute to community development and social change. In the wake of the UK riots, a Facebook group – The Change Makers – has been formed to explore how craft can be a stronger and more focussed force for positive social change. Given the failure of our political parties to move beyond their predictable responses to the crisis, we aim to develop a “Makers’ Manifesto”. We want to draw attention to positive practical examples and set out the case for craft as a force for empowerment and hope. We have set up a further webpage to source ideas for the manifesto.

The group has attracted over 130 members in just over two weeks. We have held an initial meeting in Dundee, contributed to a conference in Glasgow, and expect to hold a further meeting in London. If you believe that craft has a positive contribution to make to social change in the world today, we invite you to join us.

Already the Facebook group has attracted a great deal of debate and discussion. Much of this has helped to draw attention to exemplary projects and initiatives that demonstrate the social value of making. Over the next few weeks and months we will be drawing all this together in our Manifesto.

I am one of the contributors to “The Handbook of Design Management”, published this week by Berg.

Presenting the first systematic overview of the subject – and offering a definitive view of Design Management – the book is an invaluable resource for researchers and students in design and management, as well as for design practitioners and professional managers.

Bringing together leading international scholars, the Handbook provides a guide to the latest research in the field. It also documents the shifts that have been taking place both in management and in design which have highlighted the value of design thinking and design education to organizations. The Handbook of Design Management presents a state-of-the-art overview of the subject – its methodologies, current debates, history and future.

My chapter – Working the Crowd: Crowd-sourcing as a Strategy for Co-design – provides vital new insights on how companies and public services can better involve users and consumers in the design process. As I explain:

“Crowdsourcing and codesign are transforming innovation. Today’s competitive challenge is how you involve users directly in the design process. Apple’s success with the iPhone and iPad is as much to do with harnessing the creativity of users to develop apps, as it is to do with the design of the products themselves.

“Co-creation is not an option – it’s a necessity in fast changing markets, and in the evolution of public services. My chapter draws on research into the methods and strategies used to involve people in the design process, and presents a vision of a new and inclusive approach to design management.”

The publication of this book coincides with the Duncan of Jordanstone Master of Design degree show which opens at the end of August 2011.

“Codesign is fundamental to how we teach design in Dundee. My research is inspired and informed by the work of my colleagues and students who apply codesign in their research and practice. The Masters Show is a practical demonstration of how design can use these methods to address major issues and problems.”

Research student Fan Xia works with me in Dundee, and is from Nanjing in China. Her recent initiative to help save the trees of her hometown is an inspiring account of how design can be a force for change – even when that change is several thousands of miles away from where you are. This is her story.

On the 7^th March 2011, I read on-line news from my hometown Nanjing that the local Municipal Government was removing forty 70-year-old Platanus trees in the central area city due to the No. 3 subway construction.

I was furious when I saw the photo accompanying the news item: a row of trees had been seriously beheaded, some of which were uprooted and drastically pruned back to their core trunks. Even though the government called the “removal” a “transplant”, experts say that 80% of the trees will die eventually, judging from the statistics of previous removals. Moreover, regardless of whether it is a “removal” or a “transplant”, the trees are disappearing from the city – and that is unacceptable. I have nothing against the subway construction, but it should not be at the cost of historic trees.

Nanjing is the former Republican-era capital of China and these Platanus trees were planted during the 1920s and 1930s in the memory of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, father of Modern China, founder of the Chinese National Party, also known by the posthumous name, Mr. Sun Zhongshan. Dr. Sun died in Beijing, but his coffin was taken to Nanjing where he was buried. The main roads of Nanjing City, which the coffin passed along, were then named after him.  They are where the platanus trees were planted, which formed impressive boulevards over the past few decades, providing delightful views in all seasons that impress visitors and make the citizens very proud. In particular, the boulevards created green tunnels, sheltering the city from the scorching summer sun with pleasant shade. The older generation sees the trees as part of their childhood memories while the overseas Nanjingers (like myself) treasure them with the nostalgic sentiments. “The trees are the family members of ours,” say the residents of Nanjing.

However, the trees which remained intact even through the Nanjing Massacre of 1937, have been subject to constant felling in recent years because of new construction in the city. 20,000 trees have been reduced in number of to 3,000 today. Although what is done cannot be undone, the offensive continues. In early March 2011 they announced that at least 600 trees will be removed and transplanted somewhere else.

On seeing big trees beheaded and removed, citizens reacted angrily but few took any action at first. This was because they did not believe they could change events. But one man stood out on the street by the trees one day. He did not say anything, holding only a small banner that read “The Nanjingers care about the trees. Stop the offensive to the trees!”

The picture hit me. The man was all alone there, holding this banner up to his head. I can tell by the picture that he must be very tired, and I really wished I to be there by his side. But the reality is that I am here in Dundee – half a world away. Even if I were there, what could be done? I asked myself. But I knew that I could not remain silent. Rather than weeping in my apartment, thousands of miles away from Nanjing, I needed to DO something.

I am a designer: that is my skill and my profession. Design communicates: it brings people together, it makes complex issues clearer, it can persuade, it has power. As a young designer, my goal is to use the power of design wisely to make the world a better place to live in. So, even many, many miles from home, could I use the power of design to save the trees of Nanjing?

I designed two posters that aimed to communicate the issue, and appealing to the government to stop hacking our trees. These were then posted on a Chinese social networking site.

The posters had over 20,000 hits, more than 5,000 forwards and comments within two days of their release.

Mr. Jianxiang Huang, a very famous Nanjing-born sport commentator, used my posters on his Micro-blog page – a twitter-like platform where he has over 4 million followers, gaining massive coverage. And Dr. Yuan Yao, PhD of Beijing University and Waseda University, honored as one of the top people in China concerned with cultural heritage protection also used the posters on his blog.

The quiet voice of protest, that started with just one man on a street corner became louder. National newspapers in China reported on the campaign, a legislator of the Chinese Nationalist Party in Taiwan also got behind the campaign. With this media interest, many residents went out on the streets and tied green ribbons around the trees to signal their support for efforts to save them.

Our endeavors finally paid off.  On 17^th March, the government released an official announcement assuring the public that the removal of the trees would be halted pending further study. And the tree hacking stopped. But we all know that this is not the end of the story, which is why I made the third poster on the call for vigilance in our campaign.

I understand the government is doing the subway construction in the best interests of my city. But it has highlighted some critical problems: the lack of transparency, the absence of efficient public hearings before decisions are made, the challenges of strategic planning. The good thing is that the authorities are listening to the people, and their concerns. I am very glad I could participate in the campaign by using the strength of design, even though I am living many miles away.

The posters worked. They gave a visual focus for a campaign that was essential for preserving the identity and culture of my hometown. This experience has demonstrated to me the power that individuals have to influence events in the world around them – even when those events take place thousands of miles away. A man standing on a street corner inspired me to just do something! As a designer I can do something that communicates an idea, a campaign. And using social media, I can ensure that the idea connects with thousands of people, and gets them inspired to back our campaign.

I love my city, and my country. And I love how the power of design can be used in a responsible way to support my fellow citizens and to protect the beautiful trees of Nanjing.

This post summarises the main content of my talk at From Experience: creating objects, interest and interaction – the event held in Belfast, 3-5 March 2011. The talk will be video streamed starting at some point over the next few weeks, and I will provide a link to it here. I will therefore use this post to provide relevant links and a very brief summary of content. The key arguments I presented were these:

• Craft knowledge is too important and too unique to be limited to the domain of the hand-crafted object.
• A focus on craft knowledge – as opposed to craft products – opens up new opportunities to demonstrate the relevance of craft in the 21st century.
• HEIs can focus their support in terms of business and skills development – but extending this into a research context is more productive and constitutes real knowledge transfer.

I began by referring to makers such as Gordon Burnett, Drummond Masterton, Justin Marshall and Anne Marie Shillito as examples of craft’s quiet revolutionaries who in differing ways have been exploring the digital interfaces of craft practice. What distinguishes these quiet revolutionaries from many other makers who have integrated digital processes within their practice is that they have an explicit research agenda that is embedded with their creative practice. It is the growth of PhD research in craft over the past decade has been the most significant development in craft education and research, and we need to reflect far more on its implications for craft. The key impact of the new doctors of craft has been:

• Demonstrating the value of craft knowledge to other disciplines.
• Extending the technical, aesthetic and cultural potentials of craft practice
• Enriching the culture and methods of craft education
• Enhancing the status of craft as a source of knowledge
• Developing the making of objects as a knowledge based process

I then gave a number of examples of makers who have been working at a doctoral level whose research has had significant impacts on medical physics, scientific research, CGI technologies, archaeology, etc. These examples are elaborated in detail in my latest published book chapter, which is part of the volume The Public Value of the Humanities, edited by Jonathan Bate and published by Bloomsbury. It is possible to access the full text of this chapter through this link to Bloomsbury.

Other examples cited, not included in the book chapter are Hazel White’s Haemfarers Kist project, the doctoral research by Jo Hodge in the field of wearable technologies and smart textiles, Joanna Montgomery’s pillow talk project, and the forensic jewellery project conducted by two current MDes students at the University of Dundee: Maria MacLennan & Ruth Watson.

I also referred to the value of making and craft knowledge that can be seen in an emergent new politics of community culture. This has been explored most recently in the book Hand Made, edited by Tessy Britton.

The need to is to understand and to assert the value of the very distinctive nature of craft knowledge. A paper written by Karen Yair, co-authored by Anne Tomes and myself, and published in 2001 provides a vital framework for this: Crafting competitive advantage: Crafts knowledge as a strategic resource.

In summary, Handmade Knowledge is a distinctive UK strength, a unique mode of research, a proven source of innovation, a means to humanise technology, a vital and valuable source of learning, a means to redefine creative practice, and the source of methods that can empower communities to think through making.

From Experience: creating objects, interest and interaction is an event on craft to be held in Belfast on 3-5 March 2011. “The programme consists of a specialised workshop with selected participants and a public symposium with an impressive line up of national and international speakers and facilitators.” Well, they must have run short of impressive speakers, because somehow I’ve got the gig to provide a keynote on Friday morning. Craft Northern Ireland is organising the event, and the other speakers include some colleagues I’ve not seen for a time like Katie Bunnell and Jorunn Veiteberg. One of the driving forces behind the event is my friend Christoph Zellweger. His only advice to me: “shake up the audience and tell them things they’ve never heard about craft before”. OK, I can do that.

I know why I think craft and making is relevant today, but I am particularly interested in how others see that relevance. That is one of the themes I intend to explore in my talk. So, to find out I used the highly scientific research method of asking my friends on Facebook and my followers on Twitter for their responses to the question why is making relevant today?

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to send a response. Without any further comment on my part, here are their responses:

Making, through material engagement and workmanship, allows tangible and personal expressions of what we are and what we value. @Aghillo

Because it offers self worth. @StrandedYarnsUK

Making is relevant, process & product facilitate expression, reflection & contemplation in order to understand the world. @SonjaBarfoed

In our three dimensional material world machines can’t embed imagination or humanity. @victoriampirie

Why is making relevant today? Digital fabrication technologies are bringing control of making back in the hands of the designer. @LynneMacLachlan

You can take something old and unloved and turn it into something new and beautiful – and then its also “green”. Good Luck ! @bitandbobs

Making is important, because its related a sense of purpose, of fulfilment and connects us to the physical world & its meaning. @RachelFDCooper

Making is thinking made tangible. Without physical manifestation, thoughts can be too abstract for people to connect with. @martyn_evans

According to @lct1969 it relaxes her. Also with her quilts they have history as they are made from personal items. @Sasha_Taylor

Without making, we’d all be having a pretty bleak time in an entirely digital landscape. @joannasaurusrex

Because it makes ideas tangible – gives form to creativity. @emmaleemurphy

Intangible connection between sculptor & material – a work has superior properties if created by hand & mind, than just by mind. @tommetcalfe

For the progressive “post consumer”, making is an acquired skill that is both sought after and admired. @gr33nVinyl

Craft, understood as being responsible for all the steps in a process, is enhancing to the self; art is not a necessary condition of it; it is in a sense an illusion as the what counts as ‘responsible’ and as ‘steps’ depend on the context. Tom Fisher on Facebook

Craft and making for me is a process of creating something you think you know in your mind, into something you can see that you know in reality (or not, when you find out that you can’t possibly make what your imagination conjures up). In my current experience I find that toddlers are most pleased with the process, while I sometimes get a bit frustrated with the playdoh. Alison Stott on Facebook

Craft gets more importance and relevance and popularity when recession hits, because of lack of money people tend to get more creative themselves and there is a saying in my homeland “need is the mother of creation”. Hope Irani on Facebook

Being able to ‘make’ is empowering. You don’t have to take a mass-produced generalised solution to your particular requirement and if you do, you have the confidence to alter it to suit you better. Grace Horne on Facebook

I think its also the pleasure of making something with your hands, and having quality in mind. (Yes, I am talking about cooking.) Look who is talking, but the different iterations of my christmas biscuits got better and better. And it was a pleasure making them. Michael Hohl on Facebook

The collective act of making can provide dialogical space through which to make sense of, and therefore meaningfully craft our lived realities. Lesley McKee on Facebook