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Crafted futures? The precarious fate and untapped value of craft teaching, learning and research in the Australian tertiary academy
Craft’s ontological value arises from its flexibility, rigour, and agency. This is seen in craft’s capacity to synthesise and model complexity through socially negotiated and widely understood ways of acting and thinking. Craft is learnt and transferred through communities of practice and scholarship where literacy enables communication via material language. Craft is deeply human and creative. It embodies cultural specificity; can be deeply political; can be tied to ideas of work and labour; and is a component enabling innovation. These attributes describe a discipline aligned with the mission and goals of any government and their universities, in Australian or elsewhere, who seek to orchestrate a healthy, wealthy, and vibrant society.
Yet craft is struggling to maintain a foothold in the tertiary environment. Recent closures of courses and programs across the tertiary sector have been preceded by amalgamations and absorption into larger homogenous programs. University funding metrics require increased student to teacher ratios that have significantly changed student experience and altered established pathways and models of practice. Craft disciplines do not realise adequate measurable value and impact, relative to our colleagues in sciences and social sciences. These serious challenges invite thoughtful reform. To remain viable, craft will be required to contribute deeply considered responses to critical issues across social, ethical, cultural, political, and material imperatives, as well as other forms of innovation. This paper will present several scenarios where tertiary craft programs do have unrealised potential and a positive future as demonstrated through the capacity to play a serious role in contributing new knowledge on a range of issues with potential to engage nationally identified research priorities.