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Call for Papers: Craft Research
Thursday, May 30, 2019

Call for Papers: Craft Research

Call for Papers: Craft Research


Special Issue: Crafting Health, Wellbeing and Happiness

Today, with the advent of leisure time, growth in aging populations, and medical and technological advances, the crafts have become more multi-layered than ever, with applications in areas well beyond traditional contexts.

Craft practice is recognized as a positive influence on personal and communal wellbeing when used as a leisure and social activity. The crafts involve makers working individually and/or coming together in the home, studio, community, or even on public transport, e.g. the Circle Line project. Hands-on workshops in art galleries or craft activism support a ‘making together’ approach on a local and global scale. Initiatives such as the Great British Bake Off, (Pottery Throw etc.) and their international equivalents, represent a shared understanding of the enjoyment to be found in amateur and professional skills exchange, social interaction, cohesion and support, which benefit participants’ wellbeing to varying degrees. Other examples where health and wellbeing, hand and digital crafting come together, include fab labs, such as The Weaving Hand, a Brooklyn based sustainable weaving studio and healing arts centre, which support evidence that a combination of creative and social activity can help with mental health and the maintaining of cognitive faculties.

In more direct, health related contexts, there are growing examples of craft interventions with biomedical technology that are catalysing medical advances. The use of traditional model making and casting techniques, alongside body scanning, 3D printing and additive manufacturing, are facilitating the development of replacement joints, organs and complete anatomies to advance surgical procedures. Tissue engineering and textiles have been assimilated to develop implants for of the human body, such as the ‘Nit Occlud’ valve, hand knitted by the indigenous Aymara women in Bolivia. Such craft skills involve pre- and post-digital artisans whose critical, creative work traverses physical and virtual technological realms.

Craft Research seeks papers on crafting health, wellbeing and happiness, including, but not limited to the following:

  • Craft and individual wellbeing – the impact of making on everyday experience personal fulfilment.
  • Craft and community – socio-material engagement via group aims, activities and upskilling.
  • Craft and artisanal practice – making as cultural identity and celebration.
  • Craft and physical health – innovative practice as a catalyst within medical contexts.
  • Craft and mental health – the value of cognitive engagement through interaction.
  • Craft and activism – how making supports social, political and personal agendas.

Please contact Dr Kristina Niedderer at k.niedderer@mmu.ac.uk or Dr Katherine Townsend at katherine.townsend@ntu.ac.uk

For more information about the journal including the submission criteria click here >> https://www.intellectbooks.com/craft-research

Submission deadline: Monday, 1 September 2019