Dr. Otto von Busch identifies within this academic journal that craft and design can be reversed engineered, shared between many individuals and hacked as a form of group engagement in order to build community abilities through the use of both social activism and collaborative craft. Due to the rise of the internet the wide share of patterns, patterns, ideas and skills has increased within younger generations. Most debates surrounding craft is usually focused on the ‘tactic knowledge’ adopted by the maker or the hands of the maker, however, when crafters collaborate on a large scale, other perspectives can be used, especially when the environment surrounding the craft takes more of an active involvement than the mare curator. The use of the internet has made this factor more prominent through a curator sharing their experience, causing the rise of do-it-yourself instructions. This sharing of skills over the internet in the form of online forums, social media posts and blog updates blur the lines between the makers, influences and modes of craft production itself. Within this piece of writing, it explores metaphors and concepts of the underlining understanding of potential craft collaborations, proposing the larger understanding of do-it-yourself crafts as a shared activity to ‘do-it-together’ instead of by yourself. Using theories of  ‘cognition from super-organisms’ i.e. ant colonies and their ‘body-hood’ with Amartya Sen’s ‘capabilities approach’ and the concept of educational sloyd have been brought together to build a structure to this body of text.

“Instead of drawing new distinctions between amateur and professional or between art and craft we should ask: ‘How does craft mobilise community capabilities?’ That is, how can and does craft become a tool to liberate and release new potentials of capability and even freedom?”

It is highlighted that most of us from childhood encounter some form of handiwork, whether it is sewing, cooking or general repairs. All of us are likely to use are hands in some form of task and to a certain extent use our hands to employ practical skills in everyday life. Even though many of these tasks are usual taught to us by either family, friends or online tutorials in a social setting in the end the task itself is a solitary task as it is the makers hands alone who is curating the object. This piece explores how we can understand craft as a collaborated practise, looking into what conceptual concepts could allow craft collaborations more visible. It even explores the use fo craft as not just being a tool for coping or empowerment but as a tool to liberate, releasing new capabilities and even freedom for the user.

One way to understand craft as a collaborative endeavour could be to draw parallels to the emergence of external relations or interoperative “protocols.”

This idea is structured through understanding that the internet can be seen as a cooperative human, ‘super-organism’ i.e. and ant colony, which through cultures of collaboration and sharing, is facilitated by telecommunication (Castells 1996). Though we are different from ants we can look at the skills we have that play a huge part within our society and see how this effect the capabilities of ‘what we can do’ within our world. As a society we are built on a social system that cohabit through ‘self-organisation’ and the sharing of knowledge. In fact the act of knowing ‘brings forth a world’. What one solitary practitioner produces is impressive but not as much as what a group of practitioners can produced through team work and shared knowledge. This practise helps those in the group to challenge each other through the management of agreements and disagreements, thus, bettering both their knowledge and outcomes shaping a particular social-ability.

We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects, with the effects of another body, either to destroy that body or to be destroyed by it, either to exchange actions and passions with it or to join with it in composing a more powerful body. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 284)

I have understood that the importance of collaborating with like-minded individuals makes a stronger united product. In terms of striving towards a sustainable future my campaign will be stronger through the unity of individuals on a large scale who learn from each other, and, therefore, moving towards a better future together. The full use of the internet is imperative as it is a mass network of connections to all across the globe.