Written by: Marija Djordjević and Ivan Manojlović
What happens when the ancient wisdom of traditional craft meets the radical “what if?” of future-oriented thinking? Within the CraftWork4.0All project, we aren’t just looking at how to preserve traditional crafts or ways how things are made – we are using it as a foundation to build a more resilient, thoughtful, and imaginative future.
Our Near Future Craft online residency is a five-month journey designed to bridge the gap between heritage skills and the complex needs of the 21st century. By utilizing reality-based speculative design, we empower participants to look past current limitations and reimagine the tools, materials, and systems of tomorrow.
Directions and destination(s) of the journey are co-created by online residency mentor Sara Božanić from the Institute for Transmedia Design (Slovenia) and 5 female artisan couples: Ariadne Ferreira Neves (Greece) & Evangelina Bereti (Italy), Eva Premillieu (France) & Eirini Xanthioti (Greece), Milena Sophia Kalte (Portugal) & Alba Martinez Roberto (Spain), Alina Yatsenko (France) & Tetiana Bilous (Ukraine) and Vanda Bendarikova (Germany/Slovakia) & Loukia Chatzapoulou (Greece).
Moving Beyond “Business as Usual”
Speculative design is the heartbeat of our methodology. Instead of simply making an object that works today, we ask participants to step into a future scenario and design for it. This approach moves beyond current constraints to explore “what if/it would be nice if?” scenarios.
By looking at the world through this lens, our participants aren’t just making “products”—they are mapping and addressing significant societal issues. Whether it is the future of education, distributed goods systems, or the sustainability of materials, this methodology forces us to confront how our crafts can solve—or at least highlight—the challenges our society will face.
The Three Pillars of Our Methodology
To make this high-level thinking tangible, our residency relies on three key methodological tools:
1. Emotional Research: Designing for the “Why”
Traditional research often focuses on the “how,” but we start with the “why”. Our Emotional Research method frames the object through the lens of human investment.
- The Goal: To recognize the emotional reactions to our current surroundings and identify the specific emotions we want a “new” solution to provoke.
- The Question: For whom are we building, and what emotional needs are we fulfilling in the future?
2. The ATOM Cards: Gamifying the Future
To spark immediate creative responses, we use ATOM cards (derived from “Thing from the Future” developed by Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson). These cards help participants build scenarios that provoke new ideas regarding materials, techniques, and tools. These aren’t just random ideas; the cards have been specifically adjusted to explore the resources that will be used during the eventual live, physical residencies.
3. Co-Creation & Mentoring
Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Each session includes individual mentoring for expert and peer-to-peer feedback and Co-Creation blocks where participants work on production plans and collaborative pieces.
The residency follows a structured path to ensure that speculative ideas result in tangible outputs. We start from the discovery where we focus on setting the stage by introducing the participants to the methodology of speculative design. After that we move to ideation phase where we deep dive into the ATOM cards and emotional research to create initial “croquis” (sketches). Next up is the refinement phase, a step where participants are finalizing production plans, budgets, and refining co-creation projects. During the finalization phase participants will be presenting final objects and preparing the logistics for the physical build.
Why This Matters
By the end of this process, each participant doesn’t just leave with a sketch; they leave with a blueprint. This includes a final production plan and a budget for a physical build, alongside digital sketches and process documentation.
Ultimately, the Near Future Craft methodology is about more than just “making.” It’s about empowering makers to be architects of the future. By merging the tactile nature of craft with the analytical power of speculative design, we are ensuring that the crafts of tomorrow are as socially relevant as they are beautiful.
“The goal is to design a new ecosystem of the future—one that embraces new scenarios and addresses the world we are actually going to inhabit.”
Stay tuned as our participants move from these online speculative sessions to the live residency, where these “near future” objects will finally take physical form!
