Live cultures, collective, and curiosity: Exploring craft as integrative flourishing practice

To move people towards patterns of eating, living, and engaging with the world that promote wellbeing and a healthy environment – integrative flourishing – we need to explore novel, craft-led collaborations for remaking artefacts and human organization. In this study participants-cum-makers fermented their own urine for a substrate in which to grow an edible plant (Lactuca sativa) and create thereby a simple material relationship between their bodies and the environment. Process documentation and interviews with the 22 makers evaluate the key aspects that promoted their social engagement and thriving during the two-month experiment. Analysis reveals how jointly encountered technical ambiguity stimulates curiosity and how a unifying purpose promotes social engagement and mutual support. In synergetic dynamic these factors generated integrative flourishing in the makers. The
findings indicate the importance of recursive self-regulation following interaction with an ‘other’. The study offers a systemic model for use by practitioners and shows how craft might positively affect environmental relationships.