October 29–31, 2026
Plymouth Devon PL4 8AT
England
Conference registration deadline: October 15, 2026. Register for Making Futures 2026.
For its 2026 international conference, Making Futures (TM) will explore the relationship between objects, material intelligence and the emotional encounters we design with and through the natural world around us. Taking place at Arts University Plymouth from October 29–31, 2026, the three-day conference brings together artists, designers, innovators, educators, researchers and other specialists to consider materials not simply as passive matter, but as active participants in creative and cultural practice.
Under the topic, Feeling Materials: Care, Reciprocity & Responsive Matter, the conference takes a materials ontology approach to artefacts, considering both human design and the “more than human” agency of materials within craft, materials science and engineering, biotechnology, critical ecology and environmental advocacy.
First convened in 2009, Making Futures (TM) is a globally recognised platform for contemporary craft and material-led creative research.The conference gathers an international roster of creative scholars and thought leaders every two years to challenge traditional approaches to material practice through emerging technologies and economies that highlight the importance of our shared human heritage, social making, and the significance of place in the value of creative form.
The programme explores six interconnected tracks:
–Material Intelligence as a Framework for Ecological Care
–Designed Reciprocity & Heritage Futures
–Crafted Cultures of Repair
–Responsive & Agentic Materiality
–Education as Infrastructure: Regenerative & Circular Systems of Making
–New Socio-Material Ontologies: Entanglement Devices
Across these themes, Making Futures (TM) 2026 considers regenerative and renewable materials, repair and reuse, reciprocal creative practices, material innovation, art/science collaboration, circular systems, biotechnology, responsive materials and new relationships between people, matter and the natural world.
Featured partnership with Fab City Global Initiative & Fab Lab Network
Making Futures (TM) 2026 will feature leaders from the Fab City Global Initiative, including Tomas Vivanco and Tomas Diez, contributing to sessions on material intelligence, ecological care and regenerative systems. The conference will also host the Fab Lab European Network gathering, bringing together 20+ leaders and supporting the renewed development of Fab City Plymouth.
Fab City Global Initiative will also present PlanetAI, a Fab City Foundation research initiative which connects the planet’s satellites to what Plymouth and other communities can do about global climate and biodiversity challenges through local sensory networks. The event will include an exhibition and workshop led by Fab City leaders.
Keynote speaker: Zena Holloway will share her pioneering work growing living materials from plant roots, exploring new relationships between nature and making. The process is a collaboration with nature, a meditation on time, growth, and transformation that invites a closer look at the infinitely renewable power of plants and our relationship to the Earth.
Craft, science and circular design: ASCUS Art & Science will give a presentation of the work of their Edinburgh lab and hold workshops in sampling local ecosystems and weaving algae-based bioyarn, while Yasmin Jones-Henry chairs a discussion on regenerative and circular systems of making.
The Affective Artifact: Professor Simon Werrett of UCL and Curator Terah Walkup of The Box, will lead a cross-disciplinary roundtable on an early 20th-century diver’s suit from The Box archives.
Futures Forum, led by Innovation Nursery, will showcase emerging material-led ideas and connect researchers and entrepreneurs with industry experts.
Centre for Circular Materials: Making Futures (TM) will host the first major international convening of Arts University Plymouth’s Centre for Circular Materials, exploring regenerative and circular material practices in the southwest UK.
Craft Research Journal: Making Futures has partnered with Intellect on a special edition of Craft Research Journal exploring care, reciprocity and responsive matter in craft.
Craft advocates/organisations also joining the programme: the British Council, MAKE Southwest, Crafts Council, and Creative UK.
The 2026 conference will be held in person at Arts University Plymouth’s city centre campus in Plymouth, located in the city’s Cultural Quarter adjacent to The Box and other emerging art spaces and studios.
Registration closes: October 15, 2026 / makingfutures.org.uk / Register now.
