Call for Papers – Intention Symposium
Friday, November 14, 2025
time tba
Moore College of Art & Design
20th and the Parkway, Philadelphia
Questions?
CraftNOW Philadelphia seeks at least three emerging craft scholars and practitioners to present during its annual symposium November 14, 2025. Please email up to 200 words and a brief CV for consideration no later than September 15, 2025 to emily@craftnowphila.org
An honorarium will be provided for each presenter.
In 2025, the theme of Intention explores the conscious choices behind artistic creation, asking why we make art and how meaning is shaped through materials and processes. Every decision in art—whether in concept, medium, or execution—reflects the maker’s values, experiences, and desires. This theme invites artists, designers, and craftspeople to examine the motivations behind their work, encouraging a more purposeful and aware approach to creation. Intention also emphasizes care in the act of making, including the preservation of materials, traditions, and cultural heritage, and the role of craft in healing and restoration.
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Recent Symposium History
2024: Connectivity
2023: CraftWORKS
2022: Public | Private
CraftNOW’s 2022 symposium and programming centered on the theme Public | Private and explored continually evolving concepts of shared versus personal space. The keynote speaker was be Michael Lewis, architectural critic for the Wall Street Journal and author of Philadelphia Builds: Essays on Architecture, Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind, and City of Refuge. Other presenting institutions included Craft in America, The Center for Art in Wood, Wharton Esherick Museum, varying divisions of the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, and four emerging scholars.
View 2022 Symposium >
2021: Environmental Effects
CraftNOW’s 2021 symposium Environmental Effects examined how communities and interiors shape our experiences, when sustainability issues are expressed through craft, and the greater impact of our contemporary material culture. Longer presentations were complimented by shorter Pecha Kucha style talks. Dr. Kelli Morgan was keynote having contributed the chapter Crafting Diversity in our recent publication Craft Capital: Philadelphia’s Cultures of Making.
2020: Cultures of Making
CraftNOW’s 2020 symposium Cultures of Making examines the many ways community, activism, research, and connection develop out of collaborative craft practices in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia to the Santa Clara Pueblo and beyond. Keynote speakers Vashti DuBois, Executive Director of The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, and Hinda Mandell, editor of Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats, are central to each day’s conversation as we talk and think about the role of craft as a tool for provocation and exchange, especially in this heightened time of social unrest.
Moore College of Art & Design
20th and the Parkway, Philadelphia