A fundamental tool for the deployment of activities and reflections undertaken by the IDIS Chair, map making proved to be a necessary prerequisite.

The territory, the local industrial heritage, the expertise distributed according to needs, the economy and the system of relations and exchanges which emerge from this, individuals and the professional cultures that they develop, all of this has to be taken together, observed, understood and linked together… with as a common thread the designer, placed at the centre of the productive fabric.

The first 6 months activity of the Chair was a work of identifying, surveying and meeting the actors of industrial and crafts work in Champagne-Ardenne, led by Audrey Bigot.

We chose as a departure point not-for-profit organisations, federations and trade groups, that provided us with lists of professionals. Their internet sites helped us to learn more about their activities, and sometimes we also learnt about their equipments and their expertise.

In a second phase, meeting them allowed us to discover the techniques and tools used, their realisations and their production capacities, as well as their geographic situation and their territorial mobility. At this stage, we could see a strong division of production areas and an isolation of skills.

We then began to establish an overview of all the resources for the area of the Région Champagne-Ardenne, from the perspective of the practice of designers. While aiming to research and compile the needs, the ways of operating and the geographical positions of various companies, the Chair hopes to develop its capacity to create new and more efficient partnerships.

The reason for this map making is to gradually build a network that is capable of remeshing and consolidating a territorial industrial fabric that has been greatly weakened. Many companies, isolated and entrenched in niche productions, prove to also be places of great expertise, often the result of a family heritage or passionate workers; whether they are industries or craftspeople. In aiming to connect them to other technical or creative skillsets, such as those of designers, new types of production are bound to emerge.

The map making tool, will ultimately allow a recognition of resources and an ability to access dynamic and evolving connections.

With a system of forms to fill out, the companies, laboratories and designers can inscribe themselves on the map and give precise details of their skills, their means, their capacities or their desire to collaborate with other partners etc. There are multiple options and they are created in relation to the usages of the participants.

A designer can in this way find the expertise that he is looking for to finish a creation, a laboratory can contact a selection of companies in order to produce a study for a specified territory, companies and craftspeople can locate infrastructures that they are missing in order to further develop their activities… the possibilities are limited only by the creativity of the users of this media.

Map making is the first phase of the Chair’s journey, and with it begins a sharing economy in mobilising and raising awareness of human richness, in terms of creation and innovation, that is available to the participants, at mere kilometres from their location.

Search the IDIS ecosystem map (fr)