Making Strategies

Making strategies can help you get started in a concrete and productive way

In the early stage of making what you are doing might not feel like research. It’s through reflection, documentation and articulation that making can become research.

Making strategies intertwine and are often combined

==Making for the sake of making

• Aims to to get into a productive flow, where your intuition directs you.
• You can use age-old methods such as automatic drawing or improvisation or start from a writing prompt. Get out of your head and into action

==Making as a skill

• Is about mastering materials and techniques. In the process of learning and developing your craft.

==Making to understand

• Observing with all your senses, and using technology to capture what you see, hear or feel. We can only perceive a small part of the world around us – using tool (low and high tech) can unveil things we might miss

==Making as experimentation

• Is about testing and prototyping in order to discover new uses for the tool or material. Try as many options as you can – failure is part of the process

==Making through dialogue

• Is a form of making where exchange and conversation with others is an integral part of the making process/end result

• A designed artefact or situation can be informed by the experiences and stories of others, or it can be an invataton to share experiences and stories

==Unmaking

• Asks the uncomfortable and critical question of whether we should still be making new things in a world already flooded with stuff. How do you make without continuing an extractive and unsustainable system. Can you make something new out of what already exists? Unmaking involves things like hacking, upcycling and repair