Calum Ferguson: Local-Minded Hero
With a set of skills as wide as a Hebridean fishing net, this young gun is helping to change the shape of design in the Western Isles.
Calum Ferguson is not your average Scotsman. Having grown up on and now helping to maintain a croft in the picturesque surrounds of Hosta, North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, his creativity led him to the Glasgow School of Art, where in 2021 he completed a degree in Product Design. Today, he is fusing all of those skills – in crofting and sustainability, plus a wealth of knowledge wrought from being educated at one of the world’s most revered art schools – to campervan fit-out company Studio Vans on the Isle of Benbecula.
Sustainability drives his design ethos. “A lot of my work is based around sustainability and circular economies,” he says. “When people think about circularity in product design and manufacture, they are often just thinking about taking material and then looping its lifecycle.” For Ferguson though, it’s about taking things one stage further. “I think it’s important that we bring people into that, using their skills in a circular way, too. If you’re looking at using materials that are existent in a landscape, then maybe you should be looking at using people and skills that already exist in that landscape.”
Despite – or perhaps because of – its isolation, the Hebrides are full of multidisciplinary skillsets, says Ferguson. “Fishermen and crofters are not often seen as skilled craftspeople but I think there’s a lot of nuance there. Even the simplest things like making nets, or a lot of crofters are actually very skilled at engineering and construction. I think people don’t realise how broad the skills of a crofter could be in terms of mechanics, animal husbandry and horticulture,” he says. “Compared to, say, a farmer on the mainland, who would probably have a mechanic, and who would subcontract someone to build sheds and fences, most crofters are doing all those things themselves. They’re putting up their own sheds, they’re fixing their own tractors – quite often there are no mechanics to phone to come and fix that type of machinery. A crofter is doing five or six jobs that a professional person would do. The islands are full of really skilled and capable people with interesting skills.”
In terms of materials, Ferguson thinks outside the box. “I have always been interested in sustainability in design, and sustainability in most things,” he says. “Over the past two years I started looking into alternative materiality and sustainable materials, particularly in island and coastal communities in Scotland, looking at things like alternative uses of wool, shells from fishing industries, bioplastics from seaweed and bioplastics from fish scales.”
It is these skills that he is bringing to his role as Product Designer at Studio Vans, helping to make the company not only locally-focussed, but in a far deeper way than just being situated locally. He brings his skills as a product designer, but also as a crofter, the latter of which might just be the underdog skillset the campervan industry never knew it needed.
Calum Ferguson
For Studio Vans
By Freya Herring