Sennett explains the art of the craft

Way back in June, we went to see Richard Sennett give a talk about his new book The Craftsman. To get good at something he suggests that you need about 10 thousand hours of practise. That sounds about right.

Often designers are a little prickly about the 'craft' word. It can be used against them to diminish them into a range of monkeys - colouring in monkeys, pixel monkeys, schloopy monkeys and not highlight the creative thinkers they are too.

Often people get caught up in this hand/brain split too. Boring!

It's not just about getting skilled up, its also more about the elegance of being able to be skilled in the area, and the poetry of what you can then do, the affordances of what you can do as a result.

• the value of repetition
• the relationship between problem solving and problem finding, and what he calls the 'active dynamic'
• as a result having many techniques to be able to perform with confidence: "a quiver of techniques"
(and, my favourite of all)
• the ability that comes as a result, where we can be in an action, and simultaneously aware of what is going on around us and what is coming next, like a peripheral vision.

The last one is particularly relevant to more than hand based crafts, also to those interpersonal skills used to engage with people. It's particularly relevant to design approaches that engage people deeply in the work of designing.

It reminds me of Eddie Obeng's training - particularly the way he gets people to develop deeper facilitating skills.  Here's Eddie in action getting people at a leadership forum to express hopes and fears,and then gracefully weaves it into his session objectives, getting everyone to committ to making the session work.

And how delightful it was to be hearing about theories of the hand for a change, rather than the thought, and surprising at the relevance to what we're doing.Here's a snippet of the Sennett talk - pretty poor quality I'm afraid - but there it is as m4a. Right here.

A lovely quote from the talk about how after 10k hours of practising, you can go for 6 or 7 hours with focussed concentration:

You become a professional at the point at which when you suddenly go: 'oh my god, what time is it?'

Comments

[sophie]

Hi,

It's sophie from Pourquoitucours (french innovation agency). Jérémy talk to you last week about our next innovation theme "story telling". Could i have your email to make you participate ?

Thanks

Sophie 0033153414185