The crafting sustainabilities collective engages in research and practice on making, materiality and repair. We aim to support a sustainable future by advancing materially embodied prototypes that encourage people to take sustainable action, challenging and changing our relationship with things, and learning from communities who have been long practicing ways of living more sustainably. Comprising colleagues from the Culture Communication and Media department at UCL’s IOE, our interdisciplinary group explores these issues through the lenses of culture and heritage, interaction design and physical computing, arts, material culture, technology, music, and education.

To foster societal impact, we contribute new creative initiatives, particularly for education settings, which we sustain through strategic partnerships with schools, national charities, digital education enterprises, and community organisations. This work is catalysed through our newly established Collaborative Laboratory for Building Sustainabilities, or COLABS, which we position as a living lab informing our research, impact, and teaching.  

Our research-based teaching at Masters and PGCE embeds sustainability across a number of subject areas including climate change and heritage conservation, crafting and repairing musical instruments in the context of a consumption culture, and the social and environmental inequalities introduced by AI supply chains. The collective also runs a termly hands on session, the “sustainability skills swapshop”, that is open to staff and students centring on everyday skills in support of sustainable living (e.g.  composting, clothes repair).