Made in Platform for Contemporary Crafts & Design is a research, design, and heritage initiative encouraging collaboration and knowledge exchange between traditional craftspeople and contemporary designers, as well as other experts in the fields of culture and science. The platform addresses issues central to preservation and explores new articulations of embodied knowledge found in the rich legacy of European craftsmanship. Similarly, it examines possible avenues of diversification and repurposing by way of mutual learning and by imagining new approaches to thinking through contemporary art and design practices.

The aim is to highlight new material research approaches and other design processes related to topics like the degradation of natural resources, extraction, and models of sustainable production.

The Made in Platform is structured as a series of activities designed to complement and build on one another in order to show the relevance of crafts, as a connector between ecology and culture, in contemporary society. The activities will promote the importance of contemporary design and art practices, innovative technologies, and transdisciplinary thinking in overcoming the perception of crafts as non-inventive and obsolete, instead integrating them into the core of the ecological debate.

The activities consist of:

• creating a publicly available database of crafts and craftspeople, transdisciplinary expertise, and natural resources related to crafts and design;
• knowledge transfer and collaborations in the form of residencies, workshops, training courses, and a summer school;
• educational and discourse programmes in the form of conferences, seminars, and stakeholders’ events;
• dissemination of the project outcomes through a publication, aseries of exhibitions, and a website – www.madein-platform.com

Made in Platform for Contemporary Crafts & Design builds on the outcomes of the original project to extend its reach, both geographically and in terms of its goals and mission. The project now involves 10 partners from 6 countries to form a consortium with a broad range of expertise: Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), Ljubljana, Slovenia (coordinator); Center Rog Ljubljana, Slovenia; Zenica City Museum (MGZ), Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Drugo More, Rijeka, Croatia; State Art Collections Dresden, Museum of Decorative Arts (SKD), Dresden, Germany; Museum of Arts and Crafts (MUO), Zagreb, Croatia; Oaza, Zagreb, Croatia; Nova Iskra Creative Hub (Nova Iskra), Belgrade, Serbia; Passa Ao Futuro (PAF), Lisbon, Portugal; and the University of Applied Sciences Zwickau (WHZ), Schneeberg, Germany. Partners are of various sizes and include museums, production centres, educational institutions, and non-governmental organisations.

The platform will include more than 1000 craftspeople, designers, researchers, cultural and scientific professionals, and members of wider audiences, all of whom will participate in various project activities.

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