The Material Sample Management Tool is a label generator and database to support creative communities in documenting and sharing material experiments. It was designed around the idea of collaboratively building an archive of alternative design materials with an emphasis on materials that are easily renewable, reusable, (home) compostable within 90 days, locally abundant and make use of local waste streams. The open-source tool, which functions as a collaborative archive as well as label generator to help showcase material experiments, was developed to help any community of creatives (especially students) share them with peers online and offline, and showcase them the physical material wall in their shared workspaces, studios and tool shops.The “Material Sample Management Tool” was developed in 2020-2021 by AUAS computer engineering students Alec Wouda, Sam Overheul, Kostas Mylothridis, Mitchell de Vries and Jarno van der Velde, with wonderful guidance from Okechukwu Onwunli and the teaching team of the Enterprise Web Applications semester course.Entries into the material archive are produced by students in several courses at AUAS.This tool is part of a larger material archiving project funded by NWO by means of a Comenius Teaching Fellowship awarded to senior lecturer and researcher Loes Bogers. In close collaboration with Textile Lab Amsterdam at Waag, a dedicated project team consisting of design educators, researchers and partners at Waag will develop archiving tools for sharing research into sustainable design materials in higher education. The project is inspired by, and a continuation of the Material Archive developed at Waag by Cecilia Raspanti, Maria Viftrup and other (2017-2019). The project will run until January 2022.The project is further supported by the AUAS learning community on Critical Making and Research through Design: a partnership between the Amsterdam Fashion Institute and various research groups at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences: Fashion Research & Technology Visual Methodologies Collective Play and Civic MediaCC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0)
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This teaching toolkit for critical materials research is developed for educators in higher design and arts education. It comes out of a 2-year project funded by the NRO Comenius Teaching Fellowship program at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The project invited a group of design educators and/or researchers to develop ways to help bachelor students explore making practices that center ecosystems rather than human systems. With this toolkit, we share our tried and tested activities, which take bio-based design materials and their unique properties as a point of departure, and offer hands-on activities to critically engage in sustainable material research.
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This text is based on the publication: Wolff, R. & M. de Jong (2018), Doceren voor een inclusieve klas. Een literatuurstudie ter voorbereiding op docenttrainingen in het hoger (beroeps)onderwijs. (Teaching for an inclusive class. A literature study as preparatory input for teacher trainings in higher (vocational) education) Diemen/Rotterdam: Inholland/Risbo
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De maatschappelijke aandacht voor welvaartcreatie die verder reikt dan financiële welvaart en de oproep aan bedrijven om hieraan bij te dragen, groeit. MKB-familiebedrijven vinden het vanzelfsprekend om een bijdrage te leveren, maar geven ook aan dat dergelijke brede welvaartactiviteiten niet zijn ingebed in de huidige bedrijfsstrategie. Hieruit volgt de praktijkvraag: Hoe kunnen we [MKB-familiebedrijven] brede welvaartactiviteiten planmatiger aanpakken zodat we meer maatschappelijke impact kunnen maken? Het doel van het project is om interventies (werkwijzen) te ontwikkelen en te toetsen om brede welvaartcreatie bij MKB-familiebedrijven inzichtelijk te maken en de maatschappelijke impact ervan te vergroten door ‘ad hoc’ uitgevoerde activiteiten planmatiger aan te pakken. De centrale onderzoeksvraag is: Hoe kunnen MKB-familiebedrijven brede welvaartactiviteiten koppelen aan hun bedrijfsstrategie en de maatschappelijke impact van deze activiteiten vergroten? Het project wordt uitgevoerd door het Lectoraat Familiebedrijven van Windesheim, het Kenniscentrum Business Innovation van Hogeschool Rotterdam, en met Utrecht University School of Economics. We starten het project met acht MKB-familiebedrijven, met wie interventies worden ontwikkeld, waarna andere familiebedrijven aansluiten en in twee rondes de interventies worden doorontwikkeld. FBNed is aangesloten voor de valorisatie in Nederland en internationaal via hun koepelorganisatie FBN. De belangrijkste onderzoeksmethode in het project is de meervoudige case study methode. Verwachte outcome: Maatschappelijke impact van MKB-familiebedrijven vergroten door: • Kennis over hoe MKB-familiebedrijven zich (kunnen) ontwikkelen in brede welvaartcreatie; • De (h)erkenning van MKB-familiebedrijven in brede welvaartcreatie; • Bewustwording van kansen die brede welvaarcreatie MKB-familiebedrijven kan bieden. Verwachte output: • Een werkboek met een scan voor MKB-familiebedrijven om de huidige en gewenste situatie t.a.v. brede welvaartcreatie inzichtelijk te maken, inclusief interventies om brede welvaartactiviteiten te verankeren in de strategie en maatschappelijke impact te maken; • Twee wetenschappelijke artikelen, vijf vakpublicaties, acht teaching cases en vijf seminars in samenwerking met FBNed om resultaten breed te delen, voor onderwijs, wetenschappelijk publiek en bedrijven.
Under the umbrella of artistic sustenance, I question the life of materials, subjective value structures, and working conditions underlying exhibition making through three interconnected areas of inquiry: Material Life and Ecological Impact — how to avoid the accumulation of physical materials/storage after exhibitions? I aim to highlight the provenance and afterlife of exhibition materials in my practice, seeking economic and ecological alternatives to traditional practices through sustainable solutions like borrowing, reselling, and alternative storage methods that could transform exhibition material handling and thoughts on material storage and circulation. Value Systems and Economic Conditions —what do we mean when we talk about 'value' in relation to art? By examining the flow of financial value in contemporary art and addressing the subjectivity of worth in art-making and artists' livelihoods, I question traditional notions of sculptural skill while advocating for recognition of conceptual labour. The research considers how artists might be compensated for the elegance of thought rather than just material output. Text as Archive and Speculation— how can text can store, speculate, and circulate the invisible labour and layers of exhibition making? Through titles, material lists, and exhibition texts, I explore writing's potential to uncover latent structures and document invisible labor, considering text both as an archiving method and a tool for speculating about future exhibitions. Using personal practice as a case study, ‘Conditions for Raw Materials’ seeks to question notions of value in contemporary art, develop alternative economic models, and make visible the material, financial, and relational flows within exhibitions. The research will manifest through international exhibitions, a book combining poetic auto-theoretical reflection with exhibition speculation, new teaching formats, and long-term investigations. Following “sticky relations," of intimacy, economy and conditions, each exhibition serves as a case study exploring exhibition making from emotional, ecological, and economic perspectives.
The consortium would like to contribute to structural reduction of post-harvest and food losses and food quality improvement in Kenyan avocado and dairy value chains via the application of technical solutions and tools as well as improved chain governance competences in those food chains. The consortium has four types of partners: 1. Universities (2 Kenyan, 4 Dutch), 2. Private sector actors in those chains, 3. Organisations supporting those chains, and 4. Associate partners which support category 1 to 3 partners through co-financing, advice and reflection. The FORQLAB project targets two areas in Kenya for both commodities, a relatively well-developed chain in the central highlands and a less-develop chain in Western-Kenya. The approach is business to business and the selected regions have great potential for uptake of successful chain innovations as outcome of research results. The results are scalable for other fresh and processed product chains via a living lab network approach. The project consists of 5 work packages (WPs): 1. Inventory , status quo and inception, 2. Applied research, 3. Dissemination of research outputs through living lab networks, 4. Translation of project output in curricula and trainings, and 5. Communication among partners and WPs. The applied research will be implemented in cooperation with all partners, whereby students of the consortium universities will conduct most of the field studies and all other partners support and interact depending on the WPs. The expected outcomes are: two knowledge exchange platforms (Living Labs) supported with hands on sustainable food waste reduction implementation plans (agenda strategy); overview and proposals for ready ICT and other tech solutions; communication and teaching materials for universities and TVETs; action perspectives; and knowledge transfer and uptake.
