Looking Sideways

Looking Sideways is a podcast about making – how we make things, and how those things make us. I talk to smart people about technology, craft, innovation, and design.

2015-18 (Currently on hiatus)

Looking Sideways is my podcast and radio show about making, design, and material culture. There have been two regular series. The first (in 2015) was very much acting on a hunch, and covered all sots of topics I found interesting. Pretty much an excuse to talk to interesting people.

The second (in 2016) was simultaneously broadcast on Resonance FM, and was very maker-focused. Having spent a lot of time working with makers – inside the culture – some questions keep popping up: What’s the value of making by hand when we can buy everything we need courtesy of a global manufacturing system that we can access with a swipe across glass? Are craft practices inherently nostalgic or can they point us towards valid ways of making in the future? How are new ways of making – open-source design; making on or in the body; digital fabrication – changing the relationships between makers and consumers; between makers, and the things we make?

Looking Sideways has also spun off a special mini-series about making in Shenzhen, as part of the Hello Shenzhen exchange programme.

I also work as a freelance producer. You’ll be able to hear the first fruits of this work, a series covering craft innovation, in 2018.

Photo: Graphic street intervention from The Accessible Icon Project. Photo by Brian Funck. I discussed this with Sara Hendren in series 2, episode 4.