Transmitting Craft Knowledge: Eliciting and passing on the skills of craft masters with the help of interactive media

The central problem behind this research is how to understand and transmit the expert knowledge of skilled craftspeople. In particular we are interested in craft skills that may be disappearing, despite there being people interested in preserving those skills and learning them. For example many traditional rural skills are essential for preserving our heritage of buildings and other aspects of rural life, but there are few people left to pass on the knowledge and learners do not have the time for traditional apprenticeships.
The research is being carried out by designers and our interest is to understand how design professionals can play a part in addressing this problem.
Previous research at Sheffield Hallam University has shown that it is possible to use computer based interactive materials to help learners, who have had some initial instruction from a craft master, to continue to develop these skills at their own pace. As well as developing a system for designing these interactive materials we have methods for discovering the craft master's tacit (unspoken) knowledge and testing our understanding through a programme of experimental learning sessions.
In this project we propose to bring this work to a conclusion in two ways. Firstly we will investigate how to bring in an 'expert learner', a craftsperson with good relevant skills and experience, to work with an interactive media designer, who cannot be expected to understand the subtleties of craft practice. Secondly we will bring together all the methods and knowledge from the research programme, which started in 2001, into a prototype learning resource. This will be evaluated by asking a group of craft practitioners, experts and students, to use the prototype as part of a learning programme which will culminate in them producing new creative work using these skills.
The area of craft skill chosen for this work is traditional custom knife making. Sheffield still has a number of master craftsmen making custom knives and some of them have agreed to support the work by giving training to our expert learner. The learners taking part in the evaluation will come from a new generation of creative metalworkers whose interests lie in adapting old skills to new craft practices. This creates an opportunity to open up a new investigation into how skills can be transmitted and transformed in ways that were common among pre-industrial craftsmen but have faded away since the industrial revolution brought in a more functional idea of making, that allowed less room for reflection and artistry.
The second aspect of the research will therefore observe and record the effect of bringing together a community of craftspeople to learn a set of skills, each with a different agenda and ideas about how to apply those skills. One of the outcomes of the research will be an exhibition of work from this group and we expect to identify new research questions from this first step.
The research brings together a number of aspects of design research at Sheffield Hallam University. It draws on expertise in the role of tacit (unspoken) knowledge in design, interactive learning materials, contemporary craft metalwork, video production and human computer interface design, all based in the Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute. The research is 'practice-led' in the sense that much of the investigation is pursued through making and evaluating things. The relationship between creative practice and development of new knowledge has been a feature of this and other design research at the university where creative practices may be an important feature of the methods, but the focus is on developing useful knowledge that has implications beyond the problems of designing.