This book focusses on the role of craft as a continuing cultural practice and the revival of disappearing skills in contemporary society. It includes twenty-five essays by highly regarded artisans, academics, technologists, entrepreneurs, businesspeople, curators, and researchers from many countries representing a wide range of global craft traditions and innovations.

The authors explain their professional practices and creative pathways with knowledge, experience, and passion. They offer insightful analyses of their traditions within their culture and in the marketplace, alongside the evolution of technology as it adapts to support experimentation and business strategies. They write about teaching and research informing their practice; and they explain the importance of their tools and materials in function and form of the objects they make. The essays reveal a poignant expression of their successes, disappointments, and opportunities.

This book offers case studies of how artisans have harnessed the traditions of the past alongside the latest design technologies. The authors reveal how global craft is not only a vehicle for self-expression and creativity, but also for being deeply relevant to the world of work, community and environmental sustainability. The book makes the vital link between skills, knowledge, education, and employment, and fills a much-needed niche in Technical, Vocational Education and Training TVET.

Autorentext

Lindy Joubert was a senior lecturer in Architecture at the University of Melbourne for 28 years (semi-retired 2020 and now Senior Fellow). Lindy's academic activities are action-based research with collaborative partners. With student and professional groups, Lindy organised the concept design and development across 12 countries for education, health and cultural facilities and structures, including the Cook Islands; Mua Island, Torres Strait; Papua New Guinea; Gichocho, Kenya and for the Maasai Kenya. 'Samiland' for the Sami people in Finnish Lapland; the Tiwi Islands; Auroville, India; Los Palos cultural Centre, East Timor (Community Development Vice Chancellor's Award and over one million dollars in funding granted in partnership with NGO). Lindy has had forty national and international exhibitions of paintings, six in New York City. She is the editor-in-chief of the UNESCO Observatory peer reviewed e-journal; an editor of the UNESCO Observatory Global Village Reading Series for Kidz Book Hub; writes and presents research papers and her edited book Educating in the Arts - the Asian Experience, Twenty-four essays is published by Springer and currently preparing six sequels: Educating in the Crafts - the Global Experience.

Klappentext

This book provides a global overview of the current context of craft making, illuminating through the artisan's own words and images a wealth of craft practices, products and traditions. The book presents a way forward to making the vital link between skills, knowledge and education and the myriad of ways that creativity, crafts and artisanship are navigated and negotiated at both individual and collective levels, between inherited traditions and modern technologies. Artisans and craftspeople from many countries have been invited to contribute to this book by examining the tools and materials, form and function, their disappointments and opportunities and explaining in their own words the redefinition of the world of crafts practices particularly when facing climatic and pandemic assaults. The essays and imagery comprehensively describe the crafts not only as vehicles for self-expression and creativity but also for community health and environmental sustainability.

The books on Educating in the Crafts-The Global Experience address the need for crafts artisans, educators, NGOs, educational institutions and global economies to develop a holistic, and multi-disciplinary outlook within the context of and Technical, Vocational Education and Training. Authors negotiate and navigate the rapid changes and requirements in the job market in which skills such as flexibility, innovative thinking and entrepreneurship are essential. They also explore the challenges associated with maintaining bounded cultural identities and expressions of difference in an ever-changing, fragmented and fluid world.

Inhalt

Section 1 Tradition and Aspiration.- Invisible Menders - The Convict Women Who Made the Rajah Quilt.- Learning from Craft.- Custodians of Culture in the Global Market.- Section 2 Cross-Cultural Traditions.- Macassan Influence on Arnhem Land Material Culture.- Section 3 The Woven.- In Her Hands: Bilum Weaving in Papua New Guinea.- Weaving Their Way to Self-Sufficiency.- Al-Sadu Textile Research Project.- Section 4 The Carved.- Learning to Carve Wood in the Trobriand Islands.- Section 5 The Fired.- Firing Sculpture and Its Public Interactions.- Section 6 The Educational - Research and Development.- Contextual Learning - Craft and Design in Technical and Vocational Education.- Educating in the Crafts: The Role of Research Organisations in Continuing Craft Traditions.- Crafting Higher Education in the UK: Tensions Between Policy and Practice.- The Impact of Creative Learning on Young People's Wellbeing.- Learning Craft through Educational Research Projects - reflection from Thailand.- Section 7 The Digital.- Towards Digital Craft.- Chiang Mai Digital Craft: The Craftsman and Digital Technology.