60-494 Advanced Studio: Critical Craft: Art, Community, and Intention

10 units, Carnegie Mellon University

This course approaches craft as a site of intention, necessity, and collective care, and as a tool for critical discourse. We will examine how craft has been used to express need, support activism, and give form to voices often excluded from dominant cultural narratives. Centering art as social practice, the course positions making as a political act—one that can redistribute resources, strengthen community, and function as a strategy for survival. Students will learn to work in context, using social practice to deepen and elevate craft by embedding meaning, responsibility, and relationship into material processes. Through collaboration, site visits, and partnerships with Pittsburgh-based makers and organizations, the course explores craft not only as an object, but as a process and a conversation that elevates the meaning and impact of exhibited work.

Prerequisites: none listed

Offered: Fall 2026

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