July 9, 2025
Art
Craft
Design
Kate Mothes
Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints. All images courtesy of the artists and the National Festival of Making
This year marked the seventh edition of the festival’s theme, “Art in Manufacturing,” with large-scale installations and dozens of events.
Every year, in the town of Blackburn, Lancashire, a vibrant festival erupts with creativity in a celebration of art, craft, and industry. This year marked the seventh edition of the National Festival of Making, organized along the theme of “Art in Manufacturing.” Acclaimed artists and designers teamed up with industry leaders to create works using a variety of materials, from Morag Myerscough’s collaboration with Crown Paints for a vibrant new mural to Liaqat Rasul’s partnership with textile producer Herbert Parkinson for an optical installation.
Locality played a central role in the festival, as artists were paired with manufacturers in Lancashire. Matter at hand, the design practice of Lewis Jones, teamed up with Darwen Terracotta and Faience, which focuses on traditional glazed earthenware for home products and restoration (faience is a type of tin-glazed pottery).
Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth” (detail)
Matter at hand created a large-scale installation titled “Poured Earth,” which takes an architectural approach to materials in the northern transept of Blackburn Cathedral. The piece invites visitors to walk through an archway of wooden crates and around cast elements in various shapes and sizes, emphasizing the timelessness and continuity of earthen building materials and styles. […]
Detail of a mural by Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints
Source: Blackburn’s National Festival of Making Celebrates Collaborations Between Art and Industry
A group of academics and activists are questioning the possibility of endless economic growth on a finite planet and are advocating a bold solution: degrowth.
Originating in France, the degrowth movement has spread to places like Japan, the UK and Barcelona, taking root in academia, grassroots organisations and among university students.
The movement argues for a ‘democratisation of the economy’ and for collectively managing key resources, like housing.
Critics argue that opposing economic growth is impractical and warn of negative consequences, especially for the most vulnerable.
We take a look at the theory – and ask what the practice might look like.
00:00 Intro
02:32 The Barcelona School of Ecological economics: the roots of degrowth
05:39 Is GDP a good measure of our economies?
06:45 Could the economy be more democratic?
08:07 A net-zero housing cooperative
10:16 What can grow, and what needs to degrow?
12:31 Could green growth be a solution?
13:29 Degrowth and social justice
17:18 Challenging degrowth
[…]
I just did a composition called Middle East Fantasy. I initially wrote it to show how the augmented 2nd interval is used in music, but I ended up doing more because I got interested in the musical idea. When a scale contains a fat tone, that’s what gives it the Middle East sound. And when it appears in a scale, the fat tone will be written as an augmented 2nd.
[…]
➡ My Guide to Scales/Modes: https://www.nahresol.com/scales-modes (use discount code LEARN10 for $10 off)
➡ Patreon: / nahresol
Instagram @nahresol
Twitter @nahresol
Facebook @practicenotes
[…]
By Jessica Stewart on July 8, 2025
“Life is way too short not to give it your all!”
Born and bred in Bushwick, Joe Ficalora has transformed the face of his neighborhood, transforming it into an open-air art museum with a project he calls the Bushwick Collective. But Ficalora is not your typical art curator. In fact, one could say he’s an accidental art curator who, in the best way, used his personal pain to reshape his environment.
n 2011, after losing his mother to a devastating battle with brain cancer, Ficalora was looking for a change. Unhappy with the graffiti-covered walls around him, he and a cousin went and painted a wall white, only to have it defaced after six hours. Frustrated by the situation, he began searching the internet for street artists who could transform the walls with their art. Even though he had no connections or experience with the art world, he took a chance and invited several artists to come and paint. And in June 2012, the Bushwick Collective was born.
Over the past 13 years, Ficalora’s personal initiative has changed Bushwick and drawn top-tier local and international talent. Everyone from legendary street artists Blek le Rat and Jef Aerosol to My Modern Met favorites Dasic and Alice Pasquini have left their mark on Bushwick’s walls.
What makes the Bushwick Collective unique in terms of street art projects is its scope, which moves far beyond the aesthetics of the finished artwork. Ficalora cares deeply that anyone who brings their work to the neighborhood understands its history and is passionate about being part of the community. And each year, an annual block party brings that community out en masse—a stark contrast to Ficalora’s days growing up there in the 90s, when he wasn’t allowed to play outside for safety reasons. […]
Tymon de Laat for The Bushwick Collective
Bushwick Collective Artist BBQ, an annual event held for artists who have painted for the collective. (Photo: Dave Lee)
Interview & more: Man Spends Over a Decade Beautifying His Brooklyn Neighborhood With Street Art [Interview]
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