In the Bee Hive: Valuing Craft in the Creative Industries

Abstract

This chapter reports and reflects on the legacy of Pairings, a project initiated at Manchester School of Art in 2009. Pairings began as a way of fostering knowledge-sharing within the Art School which opened up a rich debate about collaborative working in art and design. Craft, as process of production, expanded into a discourse of co-creation, authorship, notions of ideology and ontology and new synergies across material fields. These emergent conversations revealed craft to be an adaptable method of applied thinking through and with specific knowledges. Makers engaged with each other to leave a legacy within both teaching and individual approaches. The chapter discusses how this knowledge applies to wider issues of creativity and the creative industries, where issues about the role of self-determining collectives in relation to problems of economies of production and adaptability into manufacturing models remain.