Craft Conferences - Canada and the US

Academic conferences on craft are like buses - you wait years for one, then suddenly three turn up at once. Thanks to Dennis Stevens' excellent blog, we have news of two forthcoming conferences - one in Houston this October, and another at NSCAD, Nova Scotia in November 2007. This is evidence of a healthy and welcome rise of interest in exploring issues of research in craft. Together with our own New Craft - Future Voices conference next July, we must try to ensure that each of our conferences reinforces and supports the others, as each has a distinctive focus within the overall field of craft research.

Neo-Craft: An International Conference on the Crafts and Modernity has been designed with the objective of further developing critical thinking, theory and history in relation to the crafts. It is the intention of Neo-Craft to not only acknowledge the vital role the crafts play in our culture and economy, but to challenge the position of craft by creating a forum for lively exchange and debate.
Dates: November 23-25, 2007
Location: NSCAD University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Seeking: Papers are sought pertaining to five conference themes:

• Crafts and Political Economy
• Cultural Redundancy or the Genre Under Threat
• Invention of Tradition: Craft and Utopian Ideals
• Craft and the Senses
• Global Craft

Deadline: October 6, 2006

Contact: Dr. Sandra Alfoldy, Email: salfoldy@nscad.ca

Shaping the Future of Craft is the American Craft Council's 2006 conference, to be held in Houston in October 2006. It aims to stimulate serious and timely debate on the state of craft in our culture. Various invited artists, curators, writers and educators will participate. The conference program will focus upon three successive topics:

• New Artists/New Work
• Contemporary Craft: Museums, Galleries, Alternative Spaces
• Scholarship/Critical Writing