CRAFT @ Large 2026 is a semester long community making and participatory design workshop running September–November at Cornell Tech MakerLAB. Participants can join one or both workshop tracks.
| Track:1 [Tuesdays 3:00-6:00pm] Stitching the Future: Fiber Arts, Storytelling, and Social Robotics | Track:2 [Wednesdays 3:00-6:00pm] Living Materials: Sustainable Making and Community Knowledge Sharing |
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| Explore knitting, crochet, hand stitching, and storytelling while helping imagine how tabletop robots might support creativity, conversation, and social connection in community settings. Participants will work with artists, students, and researchers to co-design future creative experiences centered on craft and community. | Experiment with natural and sustainable materials while discovering new ways to document and share creative knowledge. Participants will explore making processes, material experimentation, and collaborative storytelling to help build a living archive of community craft practices and discoveries. |
| On September 29th, the Track 1 (Stitching the Future: Fiber Arts, Storytelling, and Social Robotics) participants were introduced to social robot behavior by exploring the physical capabilities and functional boundaries of the Reachy Mini platform. Grounding their designs in three community craft proposals—'Tell Me A Story' scrapbooking, '1 Square Quilting Circle', and the 'Puppet Craft Circle'—participants learned to translate abstract interaction goals into Reachy Mini's actual hardware constraints. Recognizing that Reachy Mini is a desktop companion featuring a pan-tilt head and motorized antenna ears—but no arms or hands—participants used a 4-panel storyboard worksheet to choreograph expressive gestures like gaze tracking, head tilts, listening nods, and antenna wiggles across key workshop scenarios. Through this hands-on mapping exercise, teams gained practical experience designing realistic, empathetic robot behaviors that work within a machine's physical limits. | On September 30th, the Track 2 (Living Materials: Sustainable Making and Community Knowledge Sharing) participants engaged in hands-on crafting and upcycled material exploration, including making filament from recycled plastic bottles, weaving with plastic yarn and natural elements, and documenting their process through snapshots. A demonstration on the basics of 3D printing with upcycled filament sparked many insightful questions, which participants will be able to tackle in small clinics going deep into digital fabrication techniques like laser cutting and 3D printing in the coming weeks. The overall vision for the capstone project was introduced, offering opportunities to continue building upon their work toward a culminating sculptural exhibit. |
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| On September 22nd, the Track 1 (Stitching the Future: Fiber Arts, Storytelling, and Social Robotics) Participants gathered for a stakeholder panel exploring how craft and making can create meaningful opportunities for connection among older adults. Following the conversation, participants broke into three groups to reflect and imagine an ideal craft circle through different perspectives: MAKE, focusing on crafting and hands on activities; CARE, considering how to support and facilitate participation; and EXPERIENCE, drawing on lived experience and what makes activities meaningful. Each group then translated their ideas into a recruitment poster for their imagined craft circle and presented their work, opening a conversation about how making, care, and lived experience can come together to create meaningful opportunities for connection. | On September 23rd, the Track 2 (Living Materials: Sustainable Making and Community Knowledge Sharing) Participants continued developing their weaving pieces, experimenting spontaneously with colors, patterns, and available materials such as scrap yarn and natural fibers. The session introduced the Japanese weaving philosophy formalized by Misao Jo in 1968, emphasizing no rules or mistakes and encouraging participants to create something a machine cannot produce. Participants were also encouraged to document their process as they worked, reflecting on how documentation can capture the choices, experiments, and unexpected moments that shape a handmade piece. |
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| On September 15th, the Track 1 (Stitching the Future: Fiber Arts, Storytelling, and Social Robotics) Participants engaged in "DESIGN A NAME TAG FOR YOUR REACHY MINI," giving their tabletop companion a personal name and fabricating physical name tags, outfits, and accessories so robots could be individually identified in a group craft setting. We could see individual creativity shine through their creations.Fiber Art Lettering: Participants hand-crocheted yarn letters and embroidered felt badges with yarn stitching and ribbons Apparel & Persona Building: Makers constructed custom felt hats/berets, wire-frame spectacles, purple mustaches, award rosettes. Structural & Interactive Attachments: Designed antenna-suspended felt banners, floral eye garlands with ribbon bows, and pop-up four-element paper blocks. | On September 16th, the Track 2 (Living Materials: Sustainable Making and Community Knowledge Sharing) Welcome & Show & Tell: Participants arrived, mingled, and reconnected by sharing the signature badges and material creations they had fabricated during Week 1.Tours of Learning & Research Spaces: Conducted guided tours of the Cornell Tech MakerLAB and the Matter of Tech Lab, showcasing prototyping tools, digital fabrication machinery, and research projects.Intro to Weaving & Loom Setup: Introduced fundamental handloom weaving techniques; participants learned how to warp their wooden weaving frames.Roosevelt Island Material Foraging: Participants explored the island outdoors to gather natural, sustainable, and found items to use as weft materials for their handlooms next week. |
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| On September 8th, the Track 1 (Stitching the Future: Fiber Arts, Storytelling, and Social Robotics) kick-off session introduced participants to human-robot interaction research and the expressive tabletop companion Reachy Mini. Facilitated by the AI and Robotics Lab, the workshop explored how social robots can support storytelling, conversation, and community connection during fiber arts activities like knitting and crochet. Participants engaged in hands-on badge making by heat-pressing recycled 3D-printing PLA plastic waste into slabs and laser cutting custom robot-shaped identity badges featuring words that reflected their maker identities, such as Crafter, Tinkerer, or Community Builder. The session concluded with a reflection worksheet titled "If a Robot Joined Us," where participants identified tasks a robot could assist with versus creative steps they would rather do themselves\ | On September 9th, the Track 2 (Living Materials: Sustainable Making and Community Knowledge Sharing) session focused on experimental crafting with natural and sustainable found materials while co-designing new ways to capture tacit craft knowledge. Facilitated by the Matter of Tech Lab, the workshop addressed how traditional digital design tools often fail to capture real-world craft improvisation and spontaneous adaptation. For their fabrication activity, participants wrote their signatures on paper, digitized their handwriting using Shaper Trace, prepared vector outlines in Adobe Illustrator, and laser cut custom name tags from recycled PLA waste slabs. The workshop wrapped up with the "What else could it be?" reflection activity, where makers evaluated how alternative materials like wood, fabric, or leaves would alter their design's durability and aesthetics. |
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