In just two weeks we’ll converge on Omaha, Nebraska, for the American Craft Council’s 12th national conference. One of the happenings at this conference that I’m most looking forward to are the Common Interest Conversations that follow each main stage session, offering everyone in attendance the opportunity to lend a voice to the discussion of important issues surrounding apprenticeship, instruction, education, institutional leadership, interpretation, criticism, process, and community.

Communication and collaborative discussion have long been themes of the ACC national conferences, starting with our first gathering in June 1957 at Asilomar in California. As ACC founder Aileen Osborn Webb stated in her Asilomar opening remarks:

Briefly, the aim of our conference is to afford participants from all over the United States the chance to meet, communicate, and cooperate in solving problems; to formulate, through discussion and interchange of ideas, a basic understanding of the place of the craftsman in our contemporary society – the philosophical and sociological role of the crafts, the need of a creative and experimental approach to design and the craftsman’s practical problems of production, marketing and industrial affiliation.

A few things have changed from the early conference experiences – we are more diverse and less concerned with medium specificity (see Sam Maloof moderating the woodworkers above), however, the purpose of the Common Interest Conversations remains true to the enduring vision of Mrs. Webb – to meet, communicate and cooperate in solving problems, and to formulate through discussion and interchange of ideas.

See you in Omaha!