Open Call: Representing Craft/Crafting Representation: DHS Dialogues

Conference & Events

11 October 2021

How has craft been represented through a variety of media? What impact does representation through the particularities of images, films, spoken and written words, digital platforms have on how craft is practiced and understood? To what extent do representations focus upon materials, tools, practices, makers, environments? How has the dialogue between craft and representation informed the transmission of craft skills? How has the mediation of craft informed its status within debates about heritage and identity? In what ways might translation across particular modalities of communication resonate distinctly locally, transnationally, globally? How has the representation of craft been mobilised to generate or to problematise consumption?

This open call invites proposals from speakers worldwide and across the widest possible range of disciplines and career stages who are thinking critically about intersections between craft and representation. Speakers will show one PowerPoint slide in their 10-minute presentation.

As inspiration for proposals, these themes might be generative:
■ synergies between the medium of representation and the craft practice represented
■ under-represented identities and activist craft heritages
■ articulating the sensoriality of physical craft practices through immaterial forms of communication and representation
■ representing craft pedagogy/crafting pedagogic representation
■ displays of craft: temporalities and geographies of representation
■ lost/found in translation: representing craft in distinct linguistic and rhetorical traditions
■ representations of craft as a catalyst or alternative to consumption (repair/reuse)
■ craft workers, amateurs and ‘master’ makers: representing skill

To promote worldwide dialogue by the most equitable, sustainable and dynamic means, speakers and participants will meet through Zoom in ‘real time’. Claire O’Mahony, Chair of the Design History Society, will host each dialogue.

Two 10-minute presentations in English illustrated by a single PowerPoint slide will generate a 30-minute dialogue amongst all participants. These dialogues will be ‘live’ via Zoom on Thursdays at 19.30 hrs GMT from 20 January 2022. The length of the series will be determined by the number of engaging proposals received.

Anonymous proposals of a maximum of 300 words in English and a single PowerPoint slide should submitted to the selection panel. In a separate attachment in your email, please also provide a 100-word biography which will used with the PowerPoint slide to publicise the series should your proposal be selected.


Please send email these three attachments to the DHS Administrator, Jenna Allsopp, (designhistorysociety@gmail.com) by 12 midnight GMT on Tuesday 30 November 2021:

1) An anonymous proposal (maximum 300 words)


2) A single PowerPoint slide (which uses only copyright-free 300-dpi jpeg images)


3) A mini biography (maximum 100 words)


The seminar programme will be confirmed on Wednesday 8 December 2021.