(1.1) Workshop Series: Circular Crafts

How can craft-based knowledge form the foundation for circular design?

How can resource-efficient processes, cultural grounding, and future-oriented decisions be meaningfully connected?

Circular Crafts invites you to explore craft practices through new lenses – stretched across time, place, and value, and in dialogue with the principles of a circular economy: Slow – Narrow – Close. This workshop series opens up a space for exchange, reflection, and collective exploration with craft practitioners and designers working with their hands.

At the heart of the series is the Circular Crafts Canvas – an accessible tool that helps identify, reflect on, and integrate key aspects of circular economy thinking into one’s own practice.

The Slow – Narrow – Close model, introduced in 2016 by Nancy Bocken and her research team, offers three complementary perspectives on circular strategies. Rather than providing quick fixes, this model supports a deeper engagement with craft principles, values, and design agency.

The workshop series invites you to share your own experiences, ask questions, rethink processes, and learn from one another. It centers on openness, shared values, and a desire to situate one’s practice within a future-fit framework.

The sessions build on each other, forming a continuous learning journey. We therefore highly encourage participants to attend all dates to get the most out of the experience.The workshop will be held in German; we will support English-speaking participants where possible.

Register via the Volkskundemuseum Wien.

Organized by the Hof der Kulturen at the Volkskundemuseum Wien in collaboration with the Institute of Design Research Vienna (IDRV) and co/rizom.