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The International Exhibition was successfully launched by Crafthub partners, Materahub, on Saturday 1st – 14th April 2023 at the National Museum of Matera.
Over 1500 visitors came to see the exhibition and participate in the public events and workshops, including dedicated activities for craft professionals and enthusiasts, schools and blind and partially sighted audiences.
Co-financed by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme, the exhibition presented the project’s emerging results, including experimental processes made possible during the Crafthub Maker Exchange Residencies and workshops, plus video tutorials, craft practitioner interviews and much more.
In addition, the exhibition presented a range of works of contemporary craftsmanship – examples of craft excellence – selected by a jury and coming from all over Europe.
The exhibition went onto travel to Germany, Greece, Ireland, Wales and Norway, closing in October 2023.
The challenge of curating an exhibition fit to travel across Europe, sustainably.
The Crafthub brief requested an itinerant, replicable and sustainable design, easy to assemble and disassemble with few tools even by non-skilled workers that could adapt to different functions: display, show, inform, make, gather and listen.
Furthermore, in order to highlight the richness of craft processes and the Crafthub material library, the setup needed to accommodate both media and physical contents, and dedicate a space to the public programs including interactive activities for audience engagement.
How did the Crafthub team create a flexible, modular, lightweight and ready-made exhibition toolkit that could travel and adapt to different scenarios and locations?
The exhibition set-up design: The design concept is based on the “as found” principle: reusing existing elements or structures with minimal interventions, where needed, in order to fulfill a specific function or adapt to the environment.
This principle guided both the exhibition’s layout, in regards to its location (avoid drilling or painting walls or adding extra volumes that change perception) and the setup, which consisted of repurposing existing display props or using industry standard elements easily sourceable and sustainable in each country, such as cardboard boxes. This allows each Crafthub hosting partner to create a set-up to suit their specific needs through a modular assembly of cardboard boxes commonly used: the 40x50x40 cm box that fits on a standard shipping pallet, which is easy to source, and it sets the basic modular units of printed materials that accompany the exhibits.
The Contents Curation
The content collection methodology for the Crafthub International Exhibition and Catalogue was carefully designed to effectively narrate and archive the numerous achievements of the project, taking into account the heterogeneity of the craft sector, identifying macro themes which constitute a common thread running through the activities and research carried out by each Crafthub partner:
| The macro themes of the exhibition:
Heritage Sustainability Experimentation Empowerment and Social Inclusion Technological Innovation. |
The inventory and archive of contents narrates the experiential work born from the:
- Craft Maker Exchange Residencies
- Local Workshops for community engagement: to inspire new craft practitioners and promote social inclusion
- Showcase pieces: the excellence of European craft
- Technical and motivational craft tutorials and interviews.
In order to represent each individual craft practice (tools, materials, raw materials, samples of processed materials and finished products) and to facilitate the archiving process, the set up and packing of the exhibition’s traveling content collection, the Crafthub team identified a methodology to catalogue the 103 exhibits and represent different craft techniques.
The core themes of the Matera Exhibition – Professional empowerment, social inclusion and sustainability
Crafthub partner, Materahub, curated a public program to share their activities and achievements within the scope of the project focusing on three core themes: sustainability, social inclusion and professional empowerment.
The opening was dedicated to the theme of circular economy and the opportunities for craft to help transform industrial waste, a topic explored during the Crafthub residency in Matera in 2022. The local industry representative, Ego Italiano, donor of the sofa manufacturing waste used in the residency, went on to purchase a prototype created by local designer Giorgia Garofalo and develop a new commercial product. The Cuccù or Rooster, a symbol of local heritage, traditionally made in clay, is currently being produced by local prisoners, thanks to a partnership with Made in Carcere.
Dedicated guided tours and open talks on how the Crafthub project has supported ‘practitioner empowerment’ were organized with local students. Over 30 local craft practitioners participated in the project by:
- Traveling across Europe with the Maker Exchange residency programme to learn new techniques and network
- Developing bespoke and inclusive Crafthub workshops to engage with extensive audiences including students, tourists, craft professionals and vulnerable groups,
- Creating tutorials to share their craft processes and creative passion to inspire others
- Or by exhibiting showcase pieces in the exhibition – illustrating contemporary craft excellence.
Facilitating and inspiring new practitioners being a core aim of Crafthub.
An open talk was dedicated to exploring the precious experimentation on how craft can be harnessed as a tool to facilitate social inclusion. Members of the dependency rehabilitation centre ‘Communità Emmanuel’ shared their experience in following the Crafthub workshops together with Community animator, Uccio Santochirrico and the young adults with downs syndrome employed by the cooperative Oltre L’Arte who helped make the papier mache workshops possible. And lastly, Emanuele D’Agostino, a community member who discovered a passion for 3D printing whilst in treatment, delivered the first of a series of Crafthub workshop to local students.
Craft is innately accessible due to its materiality and it was important to make the most of this. QR CODES with audio narrations, careful set-up design of the space, dedicated guided tours for disabled audiences, and bespoke training on how to welcome them, all helped facilitate this. The content curation methodology of the exhibition; highlighting the process and not just the finished object , allowed blind and partially sighted audiences to really understand the craft techniques from start to finish. Local practitioners Elisa Janna shared a heartfelt deep-dive into their technical and creative process on making bijoux jewellery from recycled metal.
View the Crafthub Matera exhibitions video to discover more…