As a matriarch of the Fijian craft scene, Seniloli expresses a strong commitment to traditional values. The first value is silence when being taught. ‘You watch! If you ask questions, half the time you forget. Your head will be creating new ideas.’ The second is to keep it personal. ‘I don’t want to be taken [...]
Posts under ‘ethical consumerism’
UNESCO workshop for Artisans and Designers – who owns culture?
The UNESCO Workshop for Artisans and Designers in Santiago brought together participants from Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Colombia and Brazil. For three days, we discussed the ethics of the relationship between those who make craft products and those who develop them for markets. It was a fascinating workshop for many reasons.
First, it was [...]
Fair’s fair, but there’s also an art to partnership
A recent forum on the Fair Trade model for creative industries proposed that something more is needed to promote equitable cultural partnerships.
The forum ‘Fair Trade for Creative Labour’ at RMIT’s Design Research Institute explored the regulation of cultural production through accreditation formats like Fair Trade. Speakers included Associate Professor [...]
Bali carves up the Glick International Foundation
You come up with a brilliant idea. You find someone with the skills to realise that idea perfectly. You work out a fair price. While the person is completing the job, others discover your idea and start copying it. Should you try to stop them, or risk your singular idea now just being one of [...]
Timor-Leste – A king’s granddaughter helps re-weave a nation
The following text is from Sara Niner, courtesy of the Alola Foundation:
The back-strap loom common to Timor and surrounding islands was brought down by migrants from the Bronze-age Dongson culture in mainland South-east Asia around 500BC. Today, geometric Dongson patterning and designs from Indian cloth traded by Arabs and Europeans for slaves and spices in [...]
Rwandan grass meets German silver
The range of jewellery made by Martina Dempf in collaboration with basket weavers from Rwanda shows an intriguing combination of cultures. The vibrant designs and fine weaving of African grass is housed within elegantly crafted European silver. How did this collaboration come about?
Martina Dempf is a jeweller based in Berlin. She studied jewellery at Pforzheim [...]
Fulidai-dai – another way of thinking about craft
Deb Salvagno works for the East Timor Women’s Association, which runs tours of the Lautem district in East Timor, where traditional weaving flourishes. They also are involved in broader community development including health and education. Here she answers questions about the nature of this exchange between those inside and outside East Timor. It’s particularly interesting [...]
The ethical turn, turn, turn
‘The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.’
Sholom Aleichem
As we saw a ‘linguistic turn’ transform humanities in the late 20th century, on our side of the millennium it seems that we are witnessing a wave of cultural accountability – an ‘ethical turn’.
Culture is no longer ‘innocent’ of politics. An artist cannot draw inspiration [...]
Tradition For Modern Times: Selling Yarns workshop
Here’s an outline for the workshop that’s being offered for the Selling Yarns conference. This will be the first in a series of workshops taking place across the South this year. They will lay the ground for the development of the Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations that aims to bolster the ethical value of [...]
