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FS Connects

FS20: Building Place, Shaping Identity, Creating Community has been postponed to 2021.

Thank you for your patience.

The Furni­ture Society has made the diffi­cult deci­sion to post­pone our confer­ence and the Craft for a Greater Good program with a new date in June of 2021

Thank you to our part­ners UNC Asheville, STEAM Studios @ The RAMP, and BeLoved Asheville who have gener­ously made accom­mo­da­tions to welcome us next year on the UNCA Campus. We are commu­ni­cat­ing with presen­ters to shift the program lineup for FS20 to FS21

FS20 to FS21 Registration 

For those of you who have already regis­tered for FS20, please email: info@​furnituresociety.​org. Include your name and request one of the following options:

  1. Request a refund. We under­stand that some members attend the confer­ence on grants that only apply to this confer­ence, and many, in this time of economic upheaval, need to conserve their money right now. The previ­ous cancel­la­tion dead­line of Date and Month, 2020 has been voided. 
  2. Apply the regis­tra­tion fee for the 2020 confer­ence to next year’s 2021 confer­ence. The price of this year’s confer­ence will carry over, even if the price of next year’s confer­ence increases. Doing so will help us get through the cash flow chal­lenges we will face.
  3. Donate the amount paid for your 2020 confer­ence regis­tra­tion to TFS. We will arrange for you to get a tax deductible receipt. 
  4. Make a finan­cial dona­tion whether you had regis­tered for this year’s confer­ence or not. Any amount is helpful! It will imme­di­ately be put to good use.

Visit our new COMMU­NITY RESOURCES page for contin­u­ously updated infor­ma­tion for makers, small busi­nesses, educa­tors, and organizations. 

Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion about these online expe­ri­ences, stories, and opportunities. 


FS20: Building Place, Shaping Identity, Creating Community

Join us in Asheville as we explore how furni­ture can be used to foster commu­ni­ties, locally and glob­ally, as well as to strengthen the commu­nity of furni­ture making by recog­niz­ing a diverse selec­tion of perspec­tives, cultural back­grounds, and ideas.

Funda­men­tally, furni­ture exists to ready a space for occu­pancy or use. Its mere pres­ence can signal the purpose of a space or invite a partic­u­lar action. Its mate­r­ial, form, and surface design reveals a lot about how it is meant to be used, who made it, as well as provide a connec­tion with the past, a culture, or idea. Recog­niz­ing the essen­tial role that furni­ture fulfills in daily life and in society-at-large, the field of furni­ture wields tremen­dous poten­tial to have a posi­tive impact worldwide.

UNC Asheville and STEAM Studio in Asheville, NC will be our hosts for this year’s annual confer­ence. In an effort to deeply connect with and serve the commu­ni­ties in which we hold our confer­ences, we are thrilled to re-intro­duce the Craft for a Greater Good (CGG) work­shop through UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio. This year, CGG will be part­ner­ing with STEAM Studio to make furni­ture for BeLoved Asheville, a local non-profit build­ing a micro-home village address­ing the housing crisis in Asheville. Read more about the project and loca­tion HERE.

Tanya Aguiniga
Opening Keynote — Thursday, June 17

Look who is opening our conference!

Tanya Aguiñiga

Tanya Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles based artist/​designer/​craftsperson who was raised in Tijuana, Mexico. She holds an MFA in furni­ture design from Rhode Island School of Design and a BA from San Diego State Univer­sity. In her forma­tive years she created various collab­o­ra­tive instal­la­tions with the Border Arts Work­shop, an artists’ group that engages the languages of activism and commu­nity-based public art. Her current work uses craft as a perfor­ma­tive medium to gener­ate dialogues about iden­tity, culture and gender while creat­ing commu­nity. This approach has helped Museums and non-profits in the United States and Mexico diver­sify their audi­ences by connect­ing margin­al­ized commu­ni­ties through collaboration.

For more infor­ma­tion about Tanya, please visit her website at http://​www​.tanyaaguiniga​.com/

Photo Credit: Katie Levine