What's to be done?

[Kevin Murray]

It's clear that there is a great divide between rich and poor worlds. Those who are interested in developing craft projects face the challenge to find ways of ensuring that these ventures are in the best interests of those who are expected to benefit. This depends on a number of factors, which include not only understanding the interests of artisans and communities, but also what has the best chance of success in the marketplace. So what can we to do assist this process?

Here are some alternatives:

- an agency to provide placements for outreach work
- anthropological tools for better understanding of what communities want
- ways of sharing information about successful strategies
- public recognition, such as awards, for laudable projects that set benchmarks
- alternative marketing strategies to existing programs like Fair Trade

What do you think? While this group may not be able to realise any of these directly, it is certainly a starting point for developing initiatives that might address these issues.

[Kirsty Darlaston]

I am very interested in this topic and pleased that you have started this thread. I am currently working for Craftsouth on a 'traditional craft skills' project with refugees who have settled in Adelaide, Australia. The project is designed to provide short term employment, support and networking for practitioners who have had difficulty continuing their craft since moving to Australia. The project started because a man kept coming into the local library where I was weaving a community tapestry and lamenting that he had not been able to continue carpet weaving in Australia. He had been a carpet weaver in Iran for 17 years before he was forced to leave the country. He would come into the library and touch the wools, the warp and my weaving tools, and I started to think about how he could get back to weaving in Adelaide. Of course, he needed to earn a living and support his family too, and like so many refugees who have a multitude of skills, he was finding it hard to find any work that befitted his expertise.
The project is in its early development and research stages, we are currently contacting communities to source practitioners who may be interested in working with us. We envisage that the outcomes will be a workshop/exchange program where the ‘traditional’ practitioners share and teach their skills with local artists and crafts practitioners.
The project has been challenging in that it has been a long process to draw out community members and I have been visiting many service organisations and English language classes to recruit practitioners. One particular scenario stands out as indicative of how involved the process of establishing a trusting relationship with practitioners can be. At a local English language school the lecturers became very interested in the project as they had students that they believed that could benefit from it and they asked me to come and speak to the class, who had minimal English speaking skills.
Before I visited the two teachers tried to explain the project to the class, but found they had to explain what traditional skills were. They found that the notions of both craft and tradition were difficult to explain and we have had many conversations about how to frame them, words such as culture and handed-down skills were discussed. The teachers developed a PowerPoint about craft and making to explain further and when I came to visit the class I showed slides of previous projects where people from CALD communities had bought in craft objects that had personal meaning to them- many of them from their homelands. I also took in some objects that I have collected from different countries over the years. The class went well- people got very excited about the objects as they were handed around and they started to talk about how people made certain objects in Sudan, Iran or Afghanistan etc.
What the class weren’t saying was ‘I make that’, even though the teachers knew that some of them have specific skills. This shyness or fear of speaking up is what we will address in the next step of building this relationship. The class will be asked to bring in objects that having meaning to them and talk about their history, and hopefully stories will begin to emerge and the relationship between arts worker, ‘traditional’ crafts practitioner and teachers, will begin to strengthen. It is a long process, but the rewards of the exchange are already beginning to show.

[Janet DeBoos]

I agree that for any kind of useful strategy to develop, there needs to be a way of ensuring that the benefits of any project flow back to the 'poor worlds'.
It has always been a difficulty for me when engagement with other cultures more or less appropriates the skills and knowledge that already reside in those worlds. In the area of my experience- China & ceramics, there is increasingly frequent use of skilled decorators, mould makers and model makers who get paid a pittance to help make individual work that then gets sold in international markets for high prices with no recognition (particularly financial) for the craft workers. When this work would not exist except for the input of these people, and is frequently attractive to buyers because of that input- that they do not get equal recognition and remuneration is unfair. This also happens in 'collaborations' within Australia- such as the decoration of ceramic work by indigenous artists. Maybe there could be a kind of 'Fair Trade' for use of skilled artisans?
An aside- there was a project that my school was recently engaged in- Three Communities- One language (mentored by Geoff Crispin) where the artists from three remote indigenous arts communities came together over three workshops to exchange skills/ ways of working and start to form networks amongst themselves. Our roles in the project were only to facilitate- not to teach/demonstrate or in any way to 'take over' decisions about what was made or who was to make it. True collaborations occurred, with the financial remuneration dependent on the input of each artist. ( consequently I received about $30 for my pot- throwing share of a work that sold for hundreds of dollars- the bulk going to the decorator artist, as it was the decoration that was the major selling point) The project seems to have been extremely successful, with an exhibition being held in Canberra, and over $40,000 of sales made- the majority of that being returned to the artists from the communities. In addition, new techniques that facilitate production were exchanged and some of the artists have decided that they want to continue with collaborations amongst themselves, and will be returning to Canberra to take up residencies at both ANU and Strathnairn Arts next year.
The success of this project depended on it being at the indigenous artists' request (not a decision made about what would be 'good' for them), and there being an equitable split in financial return. These seem to me to be two basic tenets in any approach to development craft work.

[Janet DeBoos]

Yes kirsty- I can understand how building the relationship is the basis of any successful project. And that takes time. And it also needs finding key community figures who have the trust of that community's members. What you are doing sounds great- and each of the little advances you are making- like each stitch in a tapestry- is laying down a carpet of trust. Well done.

Kirsty Darlaston said:

I am very interested in this topic and pleased that you have started this thread. I am currently working for Craftsouth on a 'traditional craft skills' project with refugees who have settled in Adelaide, Australia. The project is designed to provide short term employment, support and networking for practitioners who have had difficulty continuing their craft since moving to Australia. The project started because a man kept coming into the local library where I was weaving a community tapestry and lamenting that he had not been able to continue carpet weaving in Australia. He had been a carpet weaver in Iran for 17 years before he was forced to leave the country. He would come into the library and touch the wools, the warp and my weaving tools, and I started to think about how he could get back to weaving in Adelaide. Of course, he needed to earn a living and support his family too, and like so many refugees who have a multitude of skills, he was finding it hard to find any work that befitted his expertise.
The project is in its early development and research stages, we are currently contacting communities to source practitioners who may be interested in working with us. We envisage that the outcomes will be a workshop/exchange program where the ‘traditional’ practitioners share and teach their skills with local artists and crafts practitioners.
The project has been challenging in that it has been a long process to draw out community members and I have been visiting many service organisations and English language classes to recruit practitioners. One particular scenario stands out as indicative of how involved the process of establishing a trusting relationship with practitioners can be. At a local English language school the lecturers became very interested in the project as they had students that they believed that could benefit from it and they asked me to come and speak to the class, who had minimal English speaking skills.
Before I visited the two teachers tried to explain the project to the class, but found they had to explain what traditional skills were. They found that the notions of both craft and tradition were difficult to explain and we have had many conversations about how to frame them, words such as culture and handed-down skills were discussed. The teachers developed a PowerPoint about craft and making to explain further and when I came to visit the class I showed slides of previous projects where people from CALD communities had bought in craft objects that had personal meaning to them- many of them from their homelands. I also took in some objects that I have collected from different countries over the years. The class went well- people got very excited about the objects as they were handed around and they started to talk about how people made certain objects in Sudan, Iran or Afghanistan etc.
What the class weren’t saying was ‘I make that’, even though the teachers knew that some of them have specific skills. This shyness or fear of speaking up is what we will address in the next step of building this relationship. The class will be asked to bring in objects that having meaning to them and talk about their history, and hopefully stories will begin to emerge and the relationship between arts worker, ‘traditional’ crafts practitioner and teachers, will begin to strengthen. It is a long process, but the rewards of the exchange are already beginning to show.

[Kevin Murray]

Kirsty,

It's great to read about the way this project has evolved. There's a clear lack of traditional craft in Australian cities, but perhaps that is why we have such a clear understanding of the term while for migrant cultures it is something that needs to be explained. It is taken for granted.

The collaborations that you are proposing seem very promising, but it would be interesting to look at what they entail. For Common Goods, the traditional artisans offered their skills in exchange for a local artist's understanding of what makes a work of art (well, it wasn't always so cut and dried, but it was the basic premise). I think it's important to look into this exchange and consider particularly what each hopes to gain from it. I think that understanding is what makes the difference between a one-off symbolic exercise and something that continues. Is there a way of doing that, even with the difficulties of language? Part of this understanding could also include those who chose not to participate, despite having the skills. For some migrants, is craft associated with the drudgery they sought to escape from?

Interesting about modesty. They would probably be perceived as virtues in many cases. When does shyness become diffidence?

And Janet, great to hear about the 'Three Communities- One language' project. Has that been documented anywhere? It would be great to see the results. How fluid should a project like this strive to be? Could there be a situation where it was the non-indigenous person decorating the Aboriginal pots? Or does the legacy is inequity mean that this kind of symmetry too quickly returns to earlier exploitative relationships.