Sustainability in the Making: Radical Craft and the Roots of Eco-Social Change

Sustainability in the Making is a PhD project that explores how craft and making contribute in building cultures of sustainability.
Cultures of sustainability are collective systems of knowledge and customs rooted in environmental and ecological values, which allow both individuals and communities to adopt more environmentally-friendly behaviours, lifestyles, and norms.
Many studies on sustainable craft focus on the way makers embody sustainability in their creative process: for example how they use recycled or upcycled materials, create artefacts using local resources, or make objects with specific sustainable purposes. This PhD, however, looks at sustainable craft from a different perspective, which sees craft and making as social activities through which people share, transform, and create cultural values, like preserving traditions, building local identities, sharing worldviews, creating a sense of place or collective histories.

By connecting this definition of sustainable craft with cultures of sustainability, this PhD asks if and how craft can be a vehicle to build sustainability cultures and aims to answer this question by studying existing craft programmes that promote specific environmental, ecological, and sustainable approaches through making.

Brief Background Story: from Craft in Makerspaces to Sustainability in the Making

This PhD started in 2019, with the title Craft in Makerspaces: the Potential for Social Change for Sustainability and was inspired by various initiatives and movements that in the second decade of the 2000s where crossing borders between traditional craft and the more tech-based do-it-yourself (DIY) cultures.
When I moved to Devon in 2020, I decided to connect with the local makerspaces to invite them to collaborate with my project. Knowing deeper about the local maker and ecological traditions and programmes, pushed me towards a rethinking of my makerspace-approach. From conversations and (sporadic, we were still in and out of lockdowns) visits to various local organisations, it was clear that in this area of the UK, individuals and communities, in continuity with the local long tradition of environmental activism, were actively using a variety of strategies to connect people with ecological issues through craft. Maker communities in Devon and the Southwest are fluid, active, and resilient communities, whose connection with the territory runs deep. This led me to shift my perspective to embrace a more anthropological curiosity, to understand how the creative actions of maker communities in the area are contributing in generating ecological cultures. That is how the project turned into Sustainability in the Making: Craft Programmes for Eco-Social Change, and looks more broadly at craft-led sustainability initiatives and programmes in the Southwest, which may or may not be also makerspace-based or -driven. 

If you are more curious about the history and evolution of Sustainability in the Making project and want to know about it more in depth, go to the project Road Map: a detailed timeline with writings, studies, and graphics from the beginning to the state of the project today.