CuratorLab and Research Lab CRAFT!

Apply for the freestanding courses CuratorLab and Research Lab CRAFT! 

CuratorLab (60 credits)
CuratorLab is a course for professionals in Arts, Crafts, Design and Architecture at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. For the 2024–25 academic year, we invite you to join CuratorLab for collective research and work in collaboration with Mint Stockholm. Mint operates in the basement of the Workers’ Educational Association in Stockholm (ABF). During the 1960s it functioned as an important center for transdisciplinary culture in Sweden and internationally, hosting an art gallery, a jazz club, an experimental sound studio, a progressive cinema and more. Building on the legacy of the experimental sound history from this period, Mint invites CuratorLab participants to develop projects where visual art and sound art are linked and explored. Together with invited experts, we will during the course create a series of projects that will explore and produce ephemeral listening sessions, performances, publications and investigate the politics of listening. Mint is a non-profit exhibition space initiated in 2019 by curators Emily Fahlén and Asrin Haidari. Focusing on contemporary art and poetry, Mint is embracing experimental practices, cross-generational encounters, and site-specific interventions. As the practice of a museum relates to—and is in dialogue with—its collection, Mint allows its program to be inspired and directed by the history of the building and its events, struggles, organizations, and cultural expressions. The course will be realized in collaboration with Mint and led by the guest lecturer Emily Fahlén and the new CuratorLab Course Director. The successful ten years term of Joanna Warsza as a Course Director comes to the end in 2024.

Research Lab CRAFT! (60 credits)
Research Lab CRAFT! explores, both through thinking and studio work, the role of craft today, what research in craft can be, and what it can do to, and tell us about, ourselves and society. It is a focused, one year course aimed at craft professionals. Taught in English, the core modules take place over two to three consecutive days each month to allow students to take part in the course without having to be based in Stockholm full time. In the course Research Lab CRAFT!, we explore how contemporary craft practitioners can engage with artistic research, contributing to and with their own craft practices as method. Through seminars/conversations, readings, exercises, group discussions and individual tutorials, Research Lab CRAFT! encourages reflection on the relation between making, writing, speaking contemporary craft practice, research and language. Students work with their own projects, applying questions such as: What is artistic research? How can craft practice guide research? In what ways can we define craft? How do we do, voice and read craft practices? How can we work to question normative methods and give space for new pedagogy and scholarship? What kind of research are we already doing, and how does making function in our research process? Students are encouraged to develop definitions of the word “craft” and other key terms within their practice, and to position themselves within a research environment by going through this set of questions, individually and collectively.

Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design is Sweden’s largest university for arts, crafts and design. Since 1844, we have educated a diverse range of professionals within these fields as well as art and sloyd teachers. We conduct both artistic and scientific education/research and currently have 900 students and 200 employees.