Create & Connect : wearable stories

As we navigate through our lives we often collect and keep mementoes, souvenirs and found objects that remind us of significant moments, times, places and experiences. However for the vast majority of people, making and material knowledge is limited and a sense of agency with our ‘stuff’ is missing. In his book ‘The case for working with your hands’ Matthew Crawford (2009) suggests that in order to be responsible for the world and our sense of being within it we need to feel that it is intelligible and the provenance of our things need to be brought closer to home. In this workshop we explored how different material objects can be used as cultural probes in order to articulate cultural identities and values. It used contemporary studio jewellery as a device to engage participants in a dialogue about the everyday and explored how sensory experiences with the material world define who we are. Design thinking and craft knowledge were combined in a practical co-creative workshop to interrogate the emotional connections between people, materials and body adornment. It used life experiences, storytelling and narrative structures to inform the making of a wearable jewel. It focused on the following two questions: How can the intrinsic preciousness of ‘things’ often discarded (but kept) be re-appropriated through creative making? How can objects, fragments and materials be beautified and re-contextualised through design thinking and processes of craft (reclaiming, reworking, transforming and relocating)?