[Re-]Thinking Curating Design and Craft: With rurals

Welcome to the sixth conversation about contemporary curatorial practice operating in relation to Design and Craft!

With Christina Skarpari, Maria Richter Simsek, introduction and moderation by Magnus Ericson and Christina Zetterlund.

In this seminar we discuss curatorial practice in relation to working with rural communities and diverse landscapes. Together with Christina Skarpari and Maria Richter Simsek we will investigate how we can listen and learn with diverse places and local dynamics, through curatorial and artistic practices. What role can craft, design and art have in nourishing thriving communities along-side engaging in critical discourses? How can curatorial practices create new opportunities and how do we support already existing initiatives? How can we through these processes contribute to challenge urban biases?

Photo by Christina Skarpari

sympraxis, at the laughing kiln, Vasoulla Adamou and Loukia Kaourani, 2022, Kornos.

Christina Skarpari is an interdisciplinary artist, designer and curator with yearslong experience in socially engaged practices in the field of art, in the NGO sector and in higher education. Since 2013 she has founded Xarkis NGO and Xarkis Festival as a design assembly and creative reaction against the socio-economic crisis of the time. She has led more than 30 projects to increase community engagement, participatory methodologies and innovation in contemporary art and design. She is currently working on her PhD at Central Saint Martins on developing a co-design methodology to engage endangered communities of craft heritage and works with film, photography and anthropology. She also works as a facilitator and lecturer in collaborative intersectional environmentalism under the Creative Unions unit at Central Saint Martins.

Maria Richter Simsek is a designer working within the field of rural development and social and environmental change. She is interested in how social design and visualization can support community development and the power of collaborative learning when mobilizing for change. Her work is practically rooted in process design, graphic facilitation and participatory design and experience from leading projects such as Learning village (Lärande Bygd), Permapilot, Active villages (Aktiva byar). Her focus right now is on the conditions of the rural forests and the social norms and practices of care that shapes them and our relationship.

Christina Zetterlund is Craft and Design historian active as independent curator as well as educator and researcher at the Department of Design, Linnaeus University. Magnus Ericson is Head of Applied Arts, IASPIS and a curator and educator working across Design, Architecture, urbanism, and Art.

[Re-]Thinking Curating Design and Craft is a series of conversations presented by IASPIS, developed and implemented as a collaboration between Christina Zetterlund and Magnus Ericson.