Old Stories, New Narratives

From an observation of ancestral artisanal practices – maintained, adapted and transformed through time – part of the Chilean contemporary design production has been nourished by a strong sense of local identity and belonging, where functional objects celebrate the “way of doing” that is particular to our cultural landscape.

In this context, the paper proposes an epistemological dialogue between six Chilean designed objects, made by local creators – artisans and designers– using native materials (copper, wood, vegetable fibres, stone and textile) aiming to discuss the validation and revitalisation of ancestral artisanal knowledge through contemporary design production, and its impact on the construction of Chilean design’s identity.

These objects are shown as current receptacles of history and tacit knowledge, whose aesthetic expression accounts for the transformations of the contexts from which they emerge. They outline new stories speaking directly or tangentially about the artisanal communities dynamics and their openness to experimentation; a story that is far from the static notion of craftsmanship as an outsider contemporary design contexts.

The dialogue between these objects is drawn from three elements that resonate connecting the ancestral with the contemporary – Territory, Technology and Aesthetics – attempting to contextualise a current understanding of local identity and its impact for the collaborative relationship between traditional makers and designers.

Magdalena Cattan Lavin is a Chilean designer and researcher, currently based in Scotland while completing her PhD at Edinburgh College of Art – the University of Edinburgh. Her thesis studies the relationship between traditional artisans and designers from a critical reflexive perspective in the Chilean Context. The research is centred in three case studies of natural fibre artisanal communities.

In Chile, she is a member of the academic staff of the Design Department at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU), Universidad de Chile and part of the research group ‘Identity and Heritage’. In this line of work, she has coordinated the project ‘Design and innovation for traditional knowledge’ financed by the outreach vice-chancellor from Universidad de Chile (2013-2014) and FAU (2015), and collaborated with the employability program from Fundación Artesanías de Chile (2015). She has presented this work at local and international conferences including in Chile, Mexico, Portugal and Argentina.

Magdalena holds an MA degree in Integrated Design from Köln International School of Design (2012) and an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from Universidad de Chile (2007).

Stories act as functions of weaving and are intrinsically connected to acts of making. Shared histories of craft and language link cultural memories and communities together, and are irrevocably tied to cultural identity. Through systematic colonisation and capitalist / industrial models of making, our stories and craft traditions have been altered, shifted, lost over time. Fortunately, as The Textile Reader (London: Berg, 2012) states: “Textiles remember. […] Moments of joy and tragedy are recorded onto the surface and embedded in the structure of the cloth […] because the textile is a record keeper.”; 57. Through an exploration of poetic textiles, this paper discusses how cross-disciplinary, conversational practices might form new relationships with these ancestral traditions.

This paper further considers how collaborative acts of making and storytelling can be woven into tactile, experiential encounters that enable reparative relationships to form, building on knowledge passed down through lines of our tūpuna wāhine (female ancestors). In doing so, it describes working with whakapapa (genealogy) as a tacit, palimpsestic methodology that engages the layering of histories and experiences: across oceans, across cultures, across time. By looking to the past, we can untangle the threads that bind us to our traditions; our stories, and crafts; and in the act of re-weaving, find new pathways to reciprocal belonging.

Arielle Walker is a New Zealand-based contemporary artist, writer, and maker of Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, and Scottish/Irish/English (Pākehā) descent.

She has exhibited widely across Aotearoa (New Zealand), including with St Paul Street Gallery, Te Tuhi, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Masterworks, Objectspace, Corban Estate, and Malcolm Smith Gallery; and in festivals such as the inaugural Whānau Mārama exhibition, Auckland Art Festival, and the Taranaki Festival of Lights. Her writing has been published in journals and by institutions including Tupuranga Journal, Lieu Journal, Oscen, Turbine | Kapohau, Art News New Zealand, Objectspace and the New Zealand Fashion Museum.

Currently working on a practice-led PhD at AUT University, her practice seeks pathways towards reciprocal belonging through the intersections and connections between land, language, and craft, focusing on tactile storytelling and ancestral narratives. Contexts that surround this include the interconnectedness of islands, migration across the swell and pull of the ocean, stories and textile traditions passed down through generations, roots and botanical belongings.

This joint presentation between a curator and a ceramic artist, accompanied by audio-visual materials, investigates contemporary approaches to craft knowledge through the lens of collaboration. The paper considers Makers’ Tale exhibition part of the Salisbury International Arts Festival 2020 (SIAF 2020), at Salisbury Arts Centre part of Wiltshire Creative.

The main theme of SIAF 2020 is movement, inspired by the octocentenary of the relocation of Salisbury Cathedral from its original and no longer suitable site to its current iconic position. Makers’ Tale is the result of collaboration between University for the Creative Arts and Wiltshire Creative in association with Salisbury Cathedral. The Cathedral has witnessed a continuum of learning and the passing on of craft skills for the last 800 years.

The creative enquiry into the legacy and current practice of the Cathedral Works Department is a pivotal component of the project. Sennett (2008) expresses the importance of transferring the knowledge of skilled practice, while Harrod suggests that craft is dependent on knowledge that is ‘tacit, practical or embodied’ (Harrod 2018:15). The modern crossovers from the areas of music, new technologies, and interactive sound installation are used to integrate craft knowledge into an innovative, lived or embedded experience for audiences.

Loucia Manopoulou MA, MRes is a curator and researcher who works across the fields of craft, design and contemporary art. Loucia’s research interests lie in the field of contemporary British Crafts and curatorship with particular emphasis on performance and performativity. Currently, curator at South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell and PhD candidate at University for the Creative Arts, investigating curatorial practice as a mode of research.

Mirka Golden-Hann has a BA(Hons) Ceramics from Harrow, University of Westminster 1999 and MA Ceramics at Bath Spa University at 2009 funded by AHRC. She is a Resident Artist and Head of Visual Arts at Wiltshire Creative where she runs her own practice as well as a busy ceramic studio and is in charge of the exhibition programme.

Working in collaboration with the British Council, the Tai Lue Project has developed methods of empowering female weavers in Nan Province, Thailand, to enable the women to realise the creative and business potential of their hand-loomed textiles. The project investigated methods of equipping the weavers with knowledge in eco-friendly design thinking, and new methods of integrating their cultural identity into their cloth. The investigation focused on three weaving villages, which were on the brink of abandoning their cultural heritage – they had adopted chemical dyes, and were increasing the use of synthetic yarns. A programme of intensive and extensive participatory design workshops was initiated, which ran intermittently over a three-year period. The investigation focused on methods of developing social innovation, incorporating sustainable and ethical production methods, and brought a fashion perspective to the re-vitalising of traditional craft practices.

The research revealed the need to re-think the weavers’ product promotion, to create new contemporary, commercially viable garments, and to ensure that their business model maximised the economic potential of their environmentally friendly hand-dyed fabrics. The research also identified a need to explore methods of encouraging a new generation of skilled designers, weavers and businesswomen to engage with the craft.

Watch Crafting Futures: The Tai Lue Project film.

Alison Welsh is a fashion designer, educator and researcher who works with communities and museums, advocating fashion and textiles as an instrument for sustainability and social change. She has a special interest in slow fashion, in hand-made artisanal textiles and in developing methods of valuing the work of all those involved in garment production.

She worked as a trend forecaster in London for 10 years. After moving into academia she headed up the award-winning BA (Hons) Fashion course at the Manchester School of Art for twenty years, then went on to be Head of Department and Head of Fashion Research at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Her fashion practice explores the use of contemporary craft within garment design, through collaborative projects in Thailand and India. Her recent projects Raising Awareness of Value (RAV): Women and Crafts in India (with Pearl Academy) and The Tai Lue Project (with Chiang Mai University) were both undertaken within the British Council’s Crafting Futures programme. Her work has been exhibited in the UK, the Netherlands, India, Japan, China, and Thailand.

The arctic is melting. The amazon is burning. And for a sixpence you can buy salvation from a sin eater. Will we recognize our complicity with the cease and desist world of corporate alters of greed and appropriation. 350 years after the Hudson Bay company fur trade, the beaver wants their land back!

Manitoba beavers, nearly extinct from fur trapping, were nurtured in the 1930s only to be flooded by hydro development in the 1960s. Ironically, they have relatives surviving in Argentina (after being introduced in the 1940s, to start their fur industry). Seventy-five years later, without natural predators, twenty-five beavers are now 100,000+ and are wreaking havoc with a sensitive ecosystem in Argentina / Chile. Beavers, like my practice are obsessed with deconstruction and reconstruction.

These misplaced Manitoba beavers tell us a cautionary tale about playing God with Mother Nature. I have fashioned a series that is recreated from recycled fur stretchers, beaver fur, and beadwork. My “cease and desist sin eater” cape laments their damnation and cries for adoration. My “by the skin of their teeth” will marry the beaver teeth DNA genome sequence, embracing identity in northern Manitoba with their Orkney ancestors through art and recycled, beaded point blankets.

Teresa Burrows is a Canadian Craft Artist.

At times living and creating in a log cabin at Paint Lake, (northern) Manitoba Canada, has isolated Teresa from the contemporary art / fine craft scene. However her unapologetic feral lifestyle, work at the Ma Mow We Tak Friendship Centre and working as a probation officer, addictions counsellor and mother have influenced the mediums and themes used in her art.

After two back surgeries in 1996 and 800km north of the nearest urban art centre, her professional artist career has seen her work, done in paint, photography, mixed media and beadwork installations, showcased at international, national, provincial and regional exhibitions, and in glass art performances. Her art has journeyed through issues of women, of isolation, suicide, abuse, violence, sexuality, self esteem and other mental health experiences. These works are layered with personal and societal histories, mythology, folklore and fairy tales and collected pieces of northern Manitoba Canada.

She has spent over 15 years creating mixed media glass beadworks. Starting as photographic digital art templates, many obsessive hours have gone into creation. She hopes to draw the audience into the intimacy of the medium, tiny pieces of glass sewn together. She wants to showcase a mastery of colour and design that moves the work beyond a history of decoration into a contemporary vision and narrative. She likes to incorporate the beads into leathers, fur and skins with elements of bone, antler and the natural world that produces sustainable materials.

As a recipient of confidential conversations, the works often reveal as enigmatic portraits and self portraits; allowing the view but not necessarily defining it, so personal perceptions and questions can exist. Numerous long term simultaneous projects mean some are in different stages of completion or evolving with new ideas. In recent years, it is a juggling act of projects half done.

This paper explores how creative practices take ethical and environmentally sustainable approaches to their creative making practices. In the paper we present a number of case studies from the creative sector, and crafts in particular, which demonstrate a move towards economic models that expand on the notions of growth alone, and include social and ecological benefit (Gauntlett: 2011; Bennett: 2012; Wilson et al: 2019). The case studies, drawn from around the Creative Informatics project (Elsden and Lechelt, 2021), highlight alternative methods of distribution, access and production of creative works and enterprises. We particularly explore how digital technology and data driven innovation may help support ethical and environmentally sustainable approaches to their everyday activities. We put this in context of a circular, Doughnut Economics (Raworth: 2018), which puts both people and planet at the heart of a radical new way of thinking about the economy. We argue that the Scottish Government’s National Performance Framework (2016), in turn informed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is a step towards a new politics that supports Doughnut Economics, and explore this through the Quadruple Bottom Line (QBL).

Inge Panneels is a maker with over twenty years of practice, using glass as a main medium to respond to site. She is also a postdoctoral researcher at Edinburgh Napier University on the Creative Informatics project with an interest in how data can be harnessed to inform better environmental decision making for material based practices

Susan Lechelt is a postdoctoral researcher in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Her research explores how to enable people to think critically about the technologies and data that surround them – typically by designing personally meaningful tangible interfaces and speculative interventions, aimed to spark reflection.