MADE IN: Mapping of Belgrade craftsmen, residences and workshops

In the framework of the international project “MADE IN: Craft Design Narratives”, this May Nova Iskra organizes several activities for students at Belgrade craft workshops, as well as a residency in which the Swedish designer Jenny Nordberg will collaborate with Belgrade craftsmen on a brand new project.

MADE IN: Craft Design Narratives is a two-year international project dealing with the relationship of contemporary design and the field of crafts, supported by the EU program Creative Europe. In addition to Nova Iskra, Museum of Arts and Crafts from Zagreb, Museum of Architecture and Design from Ljubljana, Studio Oaza from Zagreb, Werkraum Bregenzerwald from Austria, and Mikser organization from Belgrade also participate in the project.

So far, a kickoff conference and two seminars in Serbia and Croatia have been held, bringing together leading European organizations, actors and educators dealing with cross-sections of design and crafts, including Crafts Council Nederland, Atelier Luma, SPOK or BIO Biennial of Design, as well as authors such as Andrea de Chirico, Henriette Waal, Anna Gudmundsdottir, Sanja Rotter, Ivana Fabrio, Emelie Rondahl and many others.

In parallel, in all four countries the partners mapped out 10 craft workshops, whose profiles will soon be presented on the website www.madein-platform.com. It is these craft workshops that will be involved in the upcoming activities – residencies of established European designers in Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Andelsbuch, as well as workshops for students that will be facilitated by designers in cooperation with craftsmen. The results of the residences and these workshops will be showcased within the final exhibition of the project, which will be presented in all partner cities, including the Mikser Festival in 2020. Workshops that were included in the research in Belgrade include Sava perfumery, Kape Rade hat workshop, shoemaker Bane, Xylon carpentry, Naša posla leatherwork, Vilenica studio, Tatjana + light workshop, Boye Porcelain, traditional candy maker Bosiljčić and the book binding workshop Petrof.

The guest of the Nova Iskra as the resident designer will be Jenny Nordberg from Sweden (http://jennynordberg.se/). Jenny is an industrial designer who lives and works in Malmo. Her work is focused on research, examining the boundaries of the design process, the results of which vary from experimental and conceptual to commercial projects. Jenny works in various domains of applied arts, including conceptual design, product design and experimental design, generating ideas and strategic development. In her work, she often examines the ways in which manual labor, crafts and industrial and mass production can be enlarged. One of the main goals of Jenny Nordberg as a designer is to try to expand and upgrade the role of designers themselves. Her work includes personal projects that are often experimental, research and craft-oriented, lectures held on different designs and architectural schools, as well as projects that work for clients, which are most often in the domain of strategic development or in the domain of sustainable, productive and consumer design.

Jenny will be working in Belgrade in May and June, while at the same time several workshops for students will be organized, in cooperation with craft workshops Naša posla, Boya Porcelain and others. Workshops will be facilitated by Vesna Pejović, our prominent industrial designer and professor of industrial design at the Faculty of Contemporary Arts, together with the craftsmen. Details of the workshops and the method of application will be published on May 6th. The workshops will have a limited capacity of 12 participants in total, and will be held from May 20th to 24th.

Nova Iskra also has the pleasure to present four webinars/lectures produced during the Design & Craft in Dialogue conference in Belgrade last October, where Thomas Geisler (Werkraum Bregenzerwald), Maja Vardjan (BIO), Anna Gudmundsdottir (SPOK) and Ivana Fabrio (Studije dizajna Zagreb) delivered engaging presentations.