Conference Schedule
Making Futures 2026 Schedule
The 2026 conference explores the relationship between objects, material intelligence, and the emotional encounters which shape the use, substance and physical form of the interfaces we design with and through the world around us. Hear presenters from over 17 countries in a programme of papers, project presentations, exhibitions and roundtables over three days on the state and future of contemporary craft.
Conference Registration
08:00am
Lobby/ Reception Area
Welcome to Arts University Plymouth
08:30am
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Keynote - Zena Holloway of Rootfull
09:00am - 09:20am
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Find out more:
Rootfull
Session 1 : Responsive and Agentic Materiality
09:30am - 10:50am
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Session 2 : Education as Infrastructure for Circularity
09:30am - 10:50am
Fab Lab South West
Session 3 : Designed Reciprocity
09:30am - 10:50am
Fashion Design Studio
BREAK
11:00am - 11:20am
Session 4 : Ecologies of Material Knowledge
11:20am - 12:20pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Session 5 : Crafted Care, Repair and Restoration
11:20am - 12:20pm
Fab Lab South West
Session 6 : Socio-material Ontologies
11:20am - 12:20pm
Fashion Design Studio
Lunch
12:40pm - 1:30pm
Arts University Plymouth Refectory
Panel Discussion - TBC
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Workshop - Metaphorical Architecture: A workshop in Circular Fashion
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Fashion Design Studio
Georgiana Dan and Laoise Carey -
National College of Art and Design
This interactive session provides an accessible tactile pathway for each participant's fashion design practice to make circularity an intuitive, creative choice
rather than a set of rules.
Breakout Session - Re.punk Salon
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Interior Design Studio
Sabine Seymour - Founder Re.punk
Re.punk salons are informal gatherings founded by Dr. Sabine Seymour at the intersection of art, health, and artificial intelligence with a punk-inspired focus on women's health and chronic conditions. The session is part of the broader regenerative punk movement, which uses design and technology to demystify complex medical science.
Workshop - Weaving Bioyarn
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Biomaterials Lab
Sanika Pradhan - ASCUS Lab
This making workshop explores bio-based material (algal-derived biopolymer) formed by shaping a simple sodium alginate formulation into thread through a hands-on extrusion process. Participants turn material into a fibre, testing how changes in composition, processing, and handling affect its strength and texture.
BREAK
3:00pm - 3:30pm
All workshops and breakout sessions have limited capacity, so please sign up for your preferred workshop at the time you arrive at reception, where you pick up your conference badge.
Panel Session - Circular Craft Economy in the SW
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Conversation between thought leaders in creative circularity about how the southwest UK currently contributes to the transition to more regenerative craft supply chains and what is needed to meet the challenge of scaling.
Panelists:
Yasmin Jones-Henry - The Lab W1
Katie Treggiden - Author, journalist, speaker & strategist
Workshop - This Is Not a Shoe: An Exhibition of Material Ongoingness
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Fashion Design Studio
Dr Alexandra Sherlock, Pennie Jagiello and Dr. Ellen Sampson - RMIT University and the University of the West of England
Named after Magritte's Treachery of Images (1929, commonly known as Ceci n'est pas une pipe), this hands-on workshop uses the physical deconstruction of an end-of-life shoe as a method for
defamiliarising ordinary everyday objects and shifting mindsets around material flows and circularity.
Breakout Session - Exhibition Green Book: Commissions, Events, Festivals, Production
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Interior Design Studio
Mala Yamey - Curator, Up Projects
This session explores how environmental responsibility and social impact can be brought together through the development of the Exhibition Green Book: Commissions, Events, Festivals, Production, launching in spring 2027.
Workshop - Making A Winogradsky Column
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Biomaterials Lab
Sanika Pradhan - ASCUS Lab
Winogradsky column-making workshop led by ASCUS Art & Science invites participants to build their own contained ecosystem: a sealed glass cylinder of local soil, water and organic matter that, left to sit, self-organises into visible layers of colour over days and weeks, each band shaped by a different community of microbes responding to light, oxygen and nutrient gradients.
Conference Welcome Reception at The Box
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Conference Registration
08:30am
Lobby/ Reception Area
Session 7 : Material Framework for Ecological Care
09:00am - 10:40am
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Session 8 : Building with More than Human Bio-based Materials
09:00am - 10:40am
Fab Lab South West
BREAK
10:45am - 11:00am
Session 10 : Waste Upcycling for Circular Design
11:00am - 12:20pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Session 11 : Co-Creative Materialism
11:00am - 12:20pm
Fab Lab South West
Session 12 : Social and Public Mattering
11:00am - 12:20pm
Fashion Design Studio
Lunch
12:30pm - 1:20pm
Arts University Plymouth Refectory
Featured Event - The Affective Artifact
Friday 30th October
1:30pm - 3:00pm
The Box
Simon Werrett, Professor of Science and
Technology Studies,
UCL, Terah Walkup, Curator of Fine and Decorative Art, The Box
Find out more: The Affective Artifact
Featured Event - Crafting with Shape-Changing Chitosan Films
Thursday 30th October
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Biomaterials Lab
Dr. Eldy Lázaro Vásquez, PhD, University of California at Davis, US
This hands-on workshop introduces a chemically morphing chitosan film that changes shape in response to the pH of the liquids it contacts. Participants first test a few ways of delivering liquid to the film, such as spraying, dripping or brushing, and observe how each affects its shape change.
Panel Session - Living Materials Lab
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Discussion on working between art and science with living materials with founders of three leading biomaterial labs/studios.
Panellists:
Professor Carole Collet, Co-Director Living Systems Lab, UAL
Sanika Pradhan, ASCUS Art & Science Lab
Aurélie Fontan, OSMOSE Studio
Panel Session - Co-created Artifacts
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Fab Lab South West
Conversation with artists and designers who work with matter as a co-author of unexpected creative outcomes and processes.
Project SUBMERSE:D
Nigel Guérin-Garnett, Victoria Geaney, Sara Robertson and Sarah Taylor
ESMOD, De Montfort
University, Winchester
School of Art & Edinburgh Napier
Project Neo-Gemstones
Dr Sofie Boons
University of the West of
England
Designing Regenerative Textile Colour Systems: Biocolour
Dr Laura Morgan
UWE
Workshop - Earthbound Craft: Multispecies Letters for Future Flourishing
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Fashion Design Studio
Sabina Sallis - Newcastle
University
Participants explore craft as an
attitude of
care, attentiveness and ecological
reciprocity through a site-
responsive, seasonal and
speculative making process.
Inspired by Joseph Beuys'
understanding of craft as an
attitude and a form of
consciousness, together with
Lygia Clark's *Caminhando*, the
workshop reimagines making as
an embodied conversation with
place, where meaning
emerges through shared acts of
making and multispecies
encounter rather than
through predetermined outcomes
or the production of objects.
Breakout Session - Fab Lab European Network
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Interior Design Studio
BREAK
3:00pm - 3:20pm
All workshops and breakout sessions have limited capacity, so please sign up for your preferred workshop at the time you arrive at reception, where you pick up your conference badge.
Panel Session - Education as Infrastructure: Thought Leaders
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Moderator:
Yasmin Jones Henry
Panellists:
Amanda Johnston
Mark Shayler
Claudia Palcova
Adele Gingell
Megan Trapnell
Financial Times Writer, Future Fabrics Expo, Founder of APE, Designer, Arup, Director of Impact, Finisterre, CEO, Dart and Grey
Workshop - Regen Ink: Natural Dye Screen Printing Workshop
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Natural Dye Lab
Meredith Woods - Colour Earth
Hands-on introduction to natural,
regenerative dyeing through the
lens of screen printing.
Participants will print the Making
Futures logo onto their own tote
bag using dye formulated from
plant-based and waste-stream
pigments.
Breakout Session - Craft Correspondences: Reshaping Craft Education
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Interior design Studio
Dr Caroline Madden,
Dr Kim Bagley,
Senior Lecturer Gayle Matthias
NCAD, UAL and AUP
This breakout session invites educators and postgraduate students to share a project reflecting an emerging "more-than-human" approach to craft education as one one grounded in stewardship of the natural world, mutual cooperation and/or a co-crafting practice.
Conference Registration
08:30am
Lobby/ Reception Area
Session 13 : Heritage Futures
09:00am - 10:40am
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Session 14 : Education as Infrastructure for Regenerative Practices
09:00am - 10:40am
Fab Lab South West
BREAK
10:45am - 11:00am
Session 15 : New Material Methods
11:00am - 12:20pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Presentation and Workshop - Creative Reuse
11:00pm - 12:20pm
Fab Lab South West
Felipe Schmidt Fonseca, Reuse City
This workshop explores collaborative forms of creating and documenting knowledge to better support the development of material circularity systems at a local / regional level. It is part of the ongoing citizen science project "Material Literacy and Resource Assessment"* and builds on past projects developed by Global Innovation Gathering, a Berlin-based nonprofit and global network of makerspaces and innovation hubs.
Lunch
12:30pm - 1:30pm
Arts University Plymouth Refectory
All workshops and breakout sessions have limited capacity, so please sign up for your preferred workshop at the time you arrive at reception, where you pick up your conference badge.
PlanetAI - Tomas Vivanco and Lucas Maragoni, Fab City Global Initiative
Saturday 31st October
1:30pm - 3:30pm
Fab Lab South West
PLANETAI is software that turns a Fab Lab, a house or a city hall into one node of a distributed computer. A node reads the place it stands in, joins what the satellite and the ministry publish to what the street reports, works out what the place needs, and names who nearby could make it. Comes join the UK premiere of this project.
Find out more: PlanetAI
Screening - In Tune: Towards a Practice of Co-Design
1:30pm - 2:30pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Documentary by Mira Müller & Mara Trübenbach, Bauhaus-University Weimar
IN TUNE follows an one-week practice-based research workshop at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar,
where making becomes a process of listening—to materials, bodies, technologies, and one another.
Rooted in the perspectives of New Materialism and New Dramaturgy, the project explores design as
an open-ended, relational practice that unfolds through collaboration and attentiveness.
Workshop - Listening to Cloth
1:30pm - 3:30pm
Bio Materials Lab
Emma Gribble - Arts University Plymouth
The workshop creates a space for responding to fabric through a range of textile techniques in the Biomaterials Lab & Textile Studio. Rather than working towards a fixed outcome, the session encourages participants to slow down and notice material behaviours: what changes, what remains, what is lost, and what is revealed.
Workshop - MATTER: molinia grass weaving on Dartmoor
1:30pm - 3:30pm
Fashion Design Studio
Dr Laura Hopes - AUP
Sharing the research behind
MATTER, the artistic & ecological
aims for the artwork within a Land Art
continuum, as well as teaching
participants how to use molinia as a
weaving material, making our own
miniature MATTER.
BREAK
3:30pm - 3:45pm
Plenary Session
4:00pm - 4:30pm
Fab Lab South West
Closing Reception Drinks
4:30pm - 5:00pm
Lobby/ Reception Area
Featured Event - Crafting with Shape-Changing Chitosan Films
Thursday 29th October
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Dr. Eldy Lázaro Vásquez, PhD, University of California at Davis, US
This hands-on workshop introduces a chemically morphing chitosan film that changes shape in response to the pH of the liquids it contacts. Participants first test a few ways of delivering liquid to the film, such as spraying, dripping or brushing, and observe how each affects its shape change.
Featured Event - The Affective Artifact
Friday 30th October
1:20pm - 3:00pm
The Box
Simon Werrett, Professor of Science and
Technology Studies,
UCL, Terah Walkup, Curator of Fine and Decorative Art, The Box
Find out more: The Affective Artifact
Artist Talk Chantal Powell
Friday 30th October
6:00pm - 7:00pm
Plymouth Arts Cinema
Register at: Chantal Powell Artist Talk
PlanetAI - Tomas Vivanco and Lucas Maragoni, Fab City Global Initiative
Saturday 31st October
1:30pm - 3:30pm
Fab Lab South West
PLANETAI is software that turns a Fab Lab, a house or a city hall into one node of a distributed computer. A node reads the place it stands in, joins what the satellite and the ministry publish to what the street reports, works out what the place needs, and names who nearby could make it. Comes join the UK premiere of this project.
Find out more: PlanetAI
EXHIBITION: Designing Regenerative Textile Colour Systems: Biocolour research at the Centre for Print
Bio Materials Lab
The exhibition explores how plant-based, bio-derived and regenerative colour systems can
support more sustainable textile, print and material practices.
EXHIBITION: SEEDBED
MIRROR
Chantal Powell
EXHIBITION: Neo-Gemstones
Milly Hardy and David Huson - University of the West of England
EXHIBITION: SUBMERSE:D
Nigel Guérin-Garnett, Victoria Geaney, Sara Robertson and Sarah Taylor - ESMOD, De Montfort University, Winchester School of Art & Edinburgh Napier