Ok, hi, hello,
welcome to Manchester,
welcome to the Museum of Science and Industry,
welcome to Make:Shift.
It's really great to see you all here.
I have to say Manchester has beaten London,
we've got about a third more people in this room
than we did in the inaugural Make:Shift two years ago.
And it's not just about the numbers,
it's about the quality and the expertise
of the people in this room.
If you look at the delegate list
as well as the speaker list
we've got an extraordinary
range of specialism, skill, knowledge and expertise
and actually quite a daunting one
when I'm here standing in front of you all.
So that's something really special.
I think it bodes really well
for an extraordinary couple of days together.
As Rosy already touched on,
the Crafts Council has been exploring
and in some cases leading this area of innovation
in and through craft for several years.
Through our research and exhibitions,
through our talent development,
and indeed through events such as this.
But innovation through craft is nothing new.
Now that might sound a bit
counter-intuitive because for a lot of people
craft is like a shorthand for the traditional,
for the past, maybe even for luddism.
But actually innovation has happened through craft
throughout the ages and across all material disciplines.
The historian and philosopher of science Edgar Zilsel
came up with a theory named after him,
the Zilsel theorem
where he posited that in early modern cultures
it was through capitalism
bringing together different groups of people
scholars, makers, researchers
and an exchange of theoretical
and creative practical knowledge
that actually drove the Scientific Revolution.
Similarly these images are from Pamela Smith's
Making and Knowing lab
which is at Columbia University.
Smith and her team of researchers
are working on exploring the practicalities
of that early birth of science
these are some images from 16th century manuscript
where she's...
where a maker is recording his craft processes
and she observes that through those manuscripts
there are hundreds of marginal notes
where he's exploring where things went wrong
and how where something went wrong
led to something going right or a new discovery
and she observes that we've
lost some of that hands-on
hands-on approach
especially in the early stages of education.
So that's again part of our work,
is to bring that back to life
so it's a lot of people in this room now
this is a very familiar concept
from David Pye writing in the late sixties
talking about the workmanship of risk
and he talked about that
responsive manipulation of materials and processes
that leads to new discoveries
that isn't about certainty
not about the certainty of mechanical reproduction
and it's that quality
that workmanship of risk that comes only
through years and decades of
practice and doing.
That it's that, that i would argue
is one of the qualities
that gives crafters innovative edge.
So, just so that you believe me
that innovation and craft is nothing new
I've got a few historic examples
I'm going to come right up to now very soon
On your right, on the right there
we've got, what I would argue,
is an early wearable computer
it's an abacus ring
from the Ching dynasty, from China's Ching dynasty
on the left of course very familiar item
a piece of Wedgwood basaltware.
Now Wedgwood trained of course
as a potter from a very young age
he stopped making also fairly early
because of an injury
but he retained both that material knowledge
and hands-on knowledge
and combined that with his curiosity
about science and experimentation
and that led to him innovating not only this
the basaltware, but of course
the very very famous jasperware
and that was his curiosity about science
that fuelled that
but he was also an amazing entrepreneur
and marketeer.
So he brought together what we often talk about
this fusion of technology,
creativity and business skills
I think he's an early example of that.
Finally of course we've got in the bottom there,
we've got Charles Babbage's analytical engine.
Now...
For those of you who did go on the tour this morning
you might have noticed that
there's a Jacquard loom card tying machine
down in the collections of this museum
and of course famously
Babbage and his collaborator Ada Lovelace
were inspired and then adopted and adapted
the punched cards, the Jacquard punched cards
when they were prototyping what became
what's considered the earliest computer
or computing machine
so these are some early examples
we know about Babbage and Jacquard and so on
what is sometimes a bit less well-known is that
Babbage was also really inspired by
the work of John Joseph Merlin
now Merlin is best known for that swan, that's there
that's in The Bowes Museum.
It's amazingly intricate automaton
I decided not to risk the technology and use a video
but if you are not familiar with that
do go and take a look at it.
In his autobiography
Babbage talks about visiting an exhibition of Merlin's
as a young boy and seeing
this amazingly intricate dancing woman automaton
with a bird perched on her hand
and the bird's wings unfolding and the beacon
this, he says, inspired his future work.
And automata also have a link with robotics in Japan
that's a Karakuri tea-serving automaton
again I try to keep these images limited
I don't want to kind of bombard you with too much stuff
but you can
you can see underneath
this amazing intricate workings
underneath that beautiful dress.
And in Japan
it's very much recognised that
tradition of Karakuri automata
has infused a culture that has led now
to the country being the world's leading producer of robots.
So those are the historic examples
let's come right up-to-date.
So the other exhibition I highly recommend to you
if you haven't already taken a look
is the Wonder material show
in the gallery here
which tells you the story of graphene
famously Manchester is the home of graphene
it's also this year the European City of Science
and it was the isolation of graphene
by professors Andre Geim
and  Kostya Novoselov
who isolated this amazing wonder material
with extraordinary properties.
I won't go right into that, right now
but they isolated it through
the very low-tech method of scotch tape
and they did this, by the way if you go to the exhibition
you can see the scotch tape and its dispenser
donated by Novoselov
I recommend that too
and they had and they still do
in the University of Manchester
Friday afternoon or Friday night
experimental sessions where
they would be exploring and playing
and the playfulness was recognised
when those two won the Nobel Prize
they were playing with areas that were
outside of their core research
and it was this using scotch tape that
they start, they figured out how they could
pull off the first layer
that single atom of carbon with graphene.
But the reason I'm talking about it in relation to craft
is because of assertive researchers at Cornell University
who've taken again the Japanese technique
of kirigami paper cutting
and applied that to graphene
in order to then turn this 2D material
and explore what its mechanical properties could be
so on the top of course you can see paper
and then at a very high level of magnification underneath
that's the same techniques applied to graphene
and i discovered last night actually the same technique
this cut kirigami technique
is now being used with photovoltaic cells
to enhance the amount of energy capture for solar panels.
So graphene, this amazing museum,
Manchester's amazing School of Arts
and of course its history and tradition
of making and innovation are all reasons why we're here.
We're also here because it's
the only city that we know that has made
in community a pub from scratch
this is the Pilcrow and it might be
a nice place to meet up after the conference tonight.
So lots of reasons to be in Manchester.
As both Rosy and Ghislaine have said
at the heart of our work in innovation and at
and at the heart of this conference is a belief that
community, connection and collaboration
are what drive new breakthroughs
and that takes place when you bring together
individuals with different sets of expertise
different specialisms
to meet and bump into each other
and to discover what happens.
So the theorists of innovation whether
Joseph Schumpeter the economist
or more recently Steven Johnson
have all said that it's this combinatory aspect
of bringing together different skillsets
that does drive the new breakthroughs
we tend to think of innovation as a great leap forward
huge huge changes
it doesn't really happen like that, it happens iteratively
experimentally, gradually
it's a stepwise process and Steven Johnson
has taken the notion from biology
of adjacent possibilities to describe this
that you're finding what is just
the next step that leads you in an new direction
now i would argue with this bunch of people
that's in here
that we are multiplying the opportunities
to discover those adjacent possibilities
and that's really what this is all about.
Can we go to the Prezi please?
So as Rosy said, we worked with KPMG
earlier in the year and launched a report
about innovation through craft
now that's very noble and worthy and...
thoroughly researched report
it's in your bags, it's as you've already heard
it's your bedtime reading.
But we're a visual sector, right?
So alongside that report
which I do also commend to you
we worked with Daniel Charny and his studio From Now On
to produce a visual infographic
of what we discovered
in that research and what we want to do with it
so i'm going to quite quickly
take you through this.
So there we go, so this is the journey
where on we're going to go from the
bottom right-hand corner to the top left-hand corner
so we started off by saying
that craft and particularly craft in the UK
has a set of special features
that together in combination are unique.
Those include absolutely an attention
to quality and skilfulness
and also a start in ingenuity
and ingeniousness in mindset.
Of course deep material specialism
an embodied human emotional approach to materials though
problem solving and that experimentation
and iteration are already talked about.
Now lots of people
from lots of different fields will say
- Hey I do that! You know I'm a psychologist
I have deep human values
I'm a dancer, I am embodied, you know...
Many sectors have many of those
but we're arguing is that craft uniquely
has all of those in combination
and at the moment in our society, that's undervalued
and what that means is we're not really
reaping the potential benefits from that.
So if you bring those unique qualities
into what's being described as industry 4.0
the new industrial revolution
this moment where technologies are transforming
how things are made, where they're made, and so on
and you bring those entrepreneurial skills
let's think back to
the genius of Wedgwood as a marketeer
then you really create the conditions for new breakthroughs
and we need to do that
in a field of open innovation, and in collaboration
we identified in the report
several sectors that are right for this area
they also align with some of the government's priority sectors
and they also relate to
some of the topics we'll be exploring together
over these next two days.
But to really reap the benefits
there are some barriers in the way
oh sorry i'm just going to take you
don't get sort of seasick with this.
So, we've got three barriers
I think there's some more, well there are some more
in the report that we've, you know,
simplified them down to three.
One is that lots of people
don't know about all of this innovation that's already happening.
Loads of makers don't know, loads of scientists don't know
government doesn't know, that's one of the reasons
we're doing Make:Shift
is to raise awareness it's also
why we're publishing reports and doing research
so we need to raise more awareness to
open people's minds to the possibilities.
Another is the crisis and in crafts education
I think we're all very familiar with that
I'm not going to go into that in-depth right now
but the third is creating those opportunities
where people from different sectors can meet each other
discover what their common interests are,
or what's a common challenge or problem
I might want to work on with you
and then take that forward.
So we want to create more opportunities
for collaboration through investment
we, the Crafts Council, are doing that through
the Parallel Practices project and many of the
both scientists and makers who're working on that project
are speaking here over the two days.
But there are lots of other opportunities
and from a Crafts Council perspective
it's about us
facilitating the field, it's not about us only doing it
many many people should be involved in this.
So you address those barriers
and then the race is on
and the results are more and better innovation.
This, as you can imagine
with a report produced by KPMG focuses
very much on the economic aspects of it
I'm going to broaden it out in a moment
but just bear that in mind but that's why we've
focused here on those slides.
So new products, new services,
greater productivity and differentiation in international markets
and if you harness that
then you're creating more wealth
so that's the story we're telling
and as Rosy said
we want to work on this strategically.
So, this is the last bit of this
if you're getting motion sickness
I think we'll stop in a moment.
So what we're saying at the moment is that
and I think you'll hear this in Make:Shift
and many of you sitting here will know this
is that when those collaborations occur
they often occur by happy accident
that someone knows someone else
he knows that person and two people get introduced
and then they start working together
or someone walks by or you read a book
and of course it's great that
those happy accidents happen
we want to make more of them happen so
we need to become more accident prone, right?
So we need to invest in those
addressing those three barriers
and the detail barriers underneath those
that are outlined in the report
and if we strategically invest in that
then the vision is that we create an innovation culture
where the value of making and material skills
it's valued as much as every other kind of knowing
every other epistemology so that we create a world
where we can solve some of the wicked problems that we face.
So as I said
this, the work with...
KPMG focused very much on the economic value
because we know that
that's actually where politicians and government
are focusing their attention
and this report was very much targeted at that audience
but here and and in our wider work
we want to look much more
beyond the economic because after all
money is only a means to doing something else.
We want to focus on three areas which are
sorry...
there we go, okay, so three areas
which are the three themes with this conference
so social innovation, health and wellbeing  and sustainability.
This is really important
at the first Make:Shift we really laid open a field of possibilities
we looked at innovation in craft
as well as innovation through craft
and we shone a light on it
but this year we are not content with just doing that
we want to look at what difference does it make
to what end, what's the purpose of it
and that's why we're looking at the application
of those craft innovations in those three areas
I'm going to take you through this quite quickly
but in the social innovation space we know
a lot about how makerspaces and Fab Labs are
and the new technologies are changing
how things are made and how things are just distributed
now bringing together communities
both locally, MadLab here in Manchester is a great example of that
but also internationally
through the Maker Library Network for example
or the Fab Lab network.
That's great, I think we also need to remember
and that's why I've chosen these
particular examples in this image
that traditional making skills are as important and valuable
in that mix, as all the whizzy new technology
they're just different technology
so the examples here you'll recognise
Assemble and the Granby Workshop
Craig Dunlop, who is speaking later today
and CUCULA which is a project working in
Berlin with refugees.
So this theme will explore
how making is changing and bringing
people together changing how we work together
In sustainability, makers are experimenting with
new materials and new processes
they've also been doing this for years
which is why I've included Jane Atfield's chair
made from recycled plastic
it's a very nineties object
but it tells that story of...  it's in our Crafts Council Collection
it tells that story of how makers have always worked with and developed
new materials and found new applications for them
the other example is from Unmade
who spoke at Make:Shift two years ago
when at the time they were called Knyttan
and they're transforming in a different way
so they're addressing sustainability
but not through using, adopting, developing
new more sustainable materials
but by transforming the production process
so they can offer
through a combination of bringing together
software and textile skills
they offer a new way to create customisable garments
that is reducing the waste in the garment industry
around thirty percent of production goes to landfill
and the industry plans for that
but of course if you're making customisable
to order garments then that completely eliminates that waste
and finally
we're looking at the field of healthcare and wellbeing
we know that craft and making
enhances well-being and that's one
aspect of this in terms of mental health
and mental wellbeing
but also makers increasingly are working and collaborating
with medical researchers
and physicians
to bring their deep knowledge of
all of those things that we talked about earlier
the deep material specialism
and the techniques and processes to bring new breakthroughs
and perhaps, you know
the most relevant example right now
just to highlight is the Parallel Practices project
which is on the left of the slide
where embroider Karina Thompson
has collaborated with Matthew Howard
in the soft robotics department at King's College London
and again they brought to get their skills
to develop a new wearable way of picking up
and harvesting data from muscle movement
that then has applications in both
sports and healthcare and you'll have a chance
to hear more about that and
there are many many more examples so you
will have a chance to hear many more.
Just to conclude, hopefully, there we go
Make:Shift it's an opportunity to explore and discover new ideas
to debate and challenge each other and ourselves
and also to connect
and I really encourage and invite you
to do all of those things
this is such a rare opportunity that
we've got ceramicists and we've got
technologists and we've got physicist
and we've got glass makers and we've got
textile artists and we've got ecologists
and entrepreneurs all in the same room together.
So be curious, meet each other,
ask each other questions, challenge each other
and make the most of these opportunities
because this is a chance to spark new collaborations
that in turn might lead to
innovations that transform our lives.
Thank you.
