Looking Up, Down, Across and Back:: development of a design management tool for craft practitioners and a discussion of its implications for future craft education

What is the new business of design and by default the responsibility of being a designer? How can designers craft their future, understand practice as a portfolio of experience, knowledge and skill with underpinning values that transcend subject specific boundaries? What is meant by the term ‘craft practice’ in today’s world? How do we evaluate excellence in practice? How should we evaluate excellence? Drawing on post-doctoral research concerned with communication of design and craft, changing perceptions and developing reflective methods for improving quality in creative practice, this discursive paper will describe a new framework for communicating craft practice. It will use this framework as a basis for analysing progress in practice and developing a framework for excellence within craft. On closing, it calls for the missing discourses of management and innovation to become a critical part of future craft education.