Promotion: three designers working with crafts have shared their experiences of trying to preserve and revive traditional practices at a panel at Design Doha that can now be viewed on Dezeen.
Held as part of Design Doha's talks event, the Design Doha Forum, the panel was titled Crafting Futures: Models for the Revival and Innovation of Traditional Crafts.
Each of the participants represented a different model for engaging with crafts communities: Jovana Zhang runs the Róng Design Library, which catalogues and preserves crafts practices in China; Adrian Pepe is an artist whose work is focused on wool and is represented in Design Doha's main exhibition, Arab Design Now; and Sara Ouhaddou is one of four Moroccan designers on an exchange programme to work with crafts in Qatar, also through Design Doha. The panel was moderated by Gwen Farrelly, curator of Design Doha Exchange.
The Crafting Futures panel addressed different models of engaging with crafts communities
Each of the practitioners spoke about how they became interested in traditional crafts, the challenges they faced in combining them with design and how they managed the sense of responsibility for heritage and the livelihood of others when working in this space.
Pepe said that he had become drawn to craft as an antidote to being at art school, where he felt there was a severe disassociation between the two.
"It was all very abstract and conceptual, and I think I was lacking a way of engaging with my surroundings...