Local Craft Cultures: History and Practice

The course is offered as a free standing course.

The course aims to highlight, examine, and bring forward the diversity of craft practices and craft cultures that exist, and have existed, outside major cities. During the course, students engage with a critical craft historiography that sheds light on how the history of craft has been written by, among others, museums, craft organisations, and political documents. The course investigates how this historiography has shaped contemporary views of local craft. It provides students with methods and tools to examine, produce, and communicate craft practices that are socially and materially situated within a specific geographical context or culture.

The course is particularly relevant for craftspeople, folk craft practitioners, applied arts practitioners, artists, curators, and cultural heritage workers who already work, or wish to work, with craft rooted in a local environment. The course adopts a broad definition of craft and craft culture which, beyond applied arts and folk craft, may also encompass food production, cooking, agriculture, house-building, preservation, and more. The course’s aim is to capture the richness found in the social and material history of craft.

During the course, students will investigate a situated craft practice through their own work. This may include artistic expression, the creation of social activities, exhibitions, writing, podcasts, or other relevant forms of communication. They will then present their investigation in a form that can be shared both locally and internationally.

The results of the students’ investigations will become part of a knowledge platform that can contribute to a new understanding of craft and its significance in contemporary society.

Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

• provide examples of the social and material history of craft
• identify methods for conducting an individual investigation of a situated craft culture

Skills and Abilities

• formulate questions for an individual investigation of a situated craft culture
• plan and carry out an investigative or practice-based project on a situated craft culture, based on their own questions and chosen method

Judgement and Approach

• reflect on ethical issues related to their own investigation of a situated craft culture
• discuss different historiographic perspectives on local craft history
• propose ways to develop their own or others’ work based on various local conditions.

Teaching is carried out through seminars, tutoring, and online discussion forums.

The language of instruction is English.

The learning objectives are assessed through:

• submission of visual and written documentation of an investigation of a situated craft culture
• an oral presentation of an investigation of a situated craft culture
• oral feedback on other students’ investigations. 

Complementation of an examined student performance may be allowed. The possibility of complementation is assessed on an individual basis and decided by the examiner. Complementation is carried out through the supplementary assignments determined by the examiner and within a specified timeframe.

If a student who has twice received a failing grade for the same examination component wishes to change examiner ahead of the next examination session, such a request should be made to the department in writing and should be approved by the department unless there are special reasons to the contrary (Chapter 6 Section 22 of the Higher Education Ordinance).

If a student has received a recommendation from the University of Gothenburg for study support for students with disabilities, the examiner may, where it is compatible with the learning outcomes of the course and provided that no unreasonable resources are required, decide to allow the student to sit an adjusted exam or alternative form of assessment.

In the event that a course has ceased or undergone major changes, students are to be guaranteed at least three examination sessions (including the ordinary examination session) over a period of at least one year, but no more than two years after the course has ceased/been changed. The same applies to internships and professional placements (VFU), although this is restricted to just one additional examination session.

The grading scale comprises: Pass (G) and Fail (U).

Students are given the opportunity to evaluate the course anonymously at the end of the course. The results of and possible changes to the course will be shared with students who participated in the evaluation and students who are starting the course.

Online distance teaching requires access to a computer with a camera, microphone, and internet connection.

Students are responsible for the costs of materials and any travel required for completing course assignments.