Regenerative Design and Craft Lab
Regenerative Design and Craft Lab: Co-Creating a Space for Regenerative Research at Warwick
The Regenerative Design and Craft Lab promotes research approaches that are regionally situated and ecologically aware and that combine traditional craft with future-oriented design.
Project Team
Marta Ajmar (History of Art)
Carla Washbourne (CIM)
Funder
This project is funded by the University of Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Development Award https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/funding/irdas/
Project Details
Introduction
Regenerative design is a proactive and positive response to ecological decline, establishing the idea of working closely with natural systems in our processes and practices of designing and making. It promotes sustainability by recognising and showcasing the importance of material choice and the need for less wasteful, circular processes and practices of design and making, that encompass (re)use, and recycling. Regenerative craft builds on these principles to emphasise the relationship between place, people and local, indigenous processes and the value of traditional small-scale productions that carry the potential for local environmental and social benefits. There is significant wider interest in applying regenerative approaches across a range of industries, from farming to construction, manufacturing, product design and other areas of the creative industries.
Project Aim
The pilot activities funded by the University of Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Development Award will seed the idea of a Regenerative Design and Craft Lab at Warwick - a digitally augmented 21st Century ‘cottage industry’. Dedicated to imagining the design and crafts of the future as localised regenerative practices rooted in local resources and a restorative history of the bioregion, the Lab will also be wired into a growing global community of like-minded researchers.