tags:: #author #France --- Ben Lignel is a jewelry designer with a passion for collective working and thinking about craft in expansive ways. He believes in 'people-driven initiatives' and sees his work at the intersection of  'many unresolved contradictions' that together make up his existential palette. As an educator and craft advocate, he is driven by an ethics of care, inclusion, and empowerment on the one hand, and critical analyses of social relations, and power distribution on the other hand. He sees his work lying somewhere between creative and analytical work which are always in dialogue and are not separate from each other. If given the opportunity, his dream would be to establish a free university for craft, cooking, and social justice in Montreuil, the suburban town in France where he resides and which has a long tradition of political self-consciousness and activism.