This paper will draw upon findings from recent PhD research on formal design and business education for handloom weavers, in rural India and its effectiveness in challenging inequalities between the artisan and designer that has persisted in craft development strategies since industrialisation and the country’s independence. The research found that design education equips graduates with cultural and social capital as they interact with global clients in the virtual sphere and in urban gallery and boutique spaces; and strengthens graduates’ capability and opportunity to embark on a range of roles, whether weaver-designer, entrepreneur or indeed as their own agents in craft development and social change. However, new hierarchies can be created within the weaving community as graduates strive to meet growing demands from India’s burgeoning luxury and ‘sustainable’ fashion market and require labour to meet these needs, a risk and challenge that the artisans themselves recognise.
Therefore, current research explores whether inequalities between artisan and designer can be effectively challenged within a capitalist system that commodifies and appropriates craft objects merely for their idealised symbol as pre-industrial alternatives to machine-made goods. Firstly I examine the potential of collaborative craft-fashion projects in a University education context with fashion students and artisans from Kutch, India meeting online to exchange and develop ideas. It draws on Edelkoort (2015) and Barry (2021) who call for creative collectives to replace individual designers and Black and Bursich (2011) who celebrate craft circles as constructive tools for ‘oppressing the dominant corporate models of production’. Secondly, I explore curatorial strategies in exhibiting the outcomes of the collaborative projects, that challenge historic exhibiting of Indian craft (e.g Mathur, 2007; Wintle, 2017) and blur the boundaries between craft, design, art, fashion and technology (Black and Burisch, 2011); display knowledge and process (Moreno, 2022), and recognise collective creative authorship.
