Human history is inevitably linked to crafts. Our dossier offers insights into projects and essayistic analysis to explore the importance of crafts for our society today, and to create networks.
Ideas for texts or projects
Are questions around the relationship of crafts to art, production, and sustainability part of your theoretical or practical profession? Submit ideas for texts or projects to communications-dhaka@goethe.de
What challenges do handicraft artisans face while goods are easily available at the click of a button? Is there an expiration date to the existence of traditional crafts?
Supply chains faced obstacles during the Covid pandemic. Stimulus packages were introduced. However, little was done for women artisans. But activists and promoters of arts and crafts in Bangladesh seek to change mindsets.
Fashion without exploitation: The fourth exchange project by Local International for students of fashion design in Germany and Bangladesh was dedicated to sustainability along supply chains. The students now present their results and responses in an online exhibition.
Photo (detail): Istelaillustrated I Goethe-Institut Bangladesh
Photo (detail): Istelaillustrated I Goethe-Institut Bangladesh
Although eco-friendly, ethical, and sustainable fashion has only been a recent awakening for the global fashion industry, Bangladesh has been a quiet champion practicing it in silence for multiple generations.
Are the tradition-rich methods to create certain products still in keeping with the times or must they yield to the driving rhythm of the globalised economy?
Our editor meets one of her inspiring mentors to reflect on aspirations for a “good life” with the constraints of a finite planet and solidarity actions for Bangladesh’s crafts people that would continue to have impact beyond this pandemic.
Learning from Dhaka: In a German-Bangladeshi exchange program, young designers are rethinking crafts – as an arena for cultural and social sustainability
Local International is an international academic exchange program for fashion designers from Germany and Bangladesh focusing on sustainable design strategies, circularity and transparency in fair production methods within the textile and garment industry. Local International was initiated by Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, weißensee kunsthochschule Berlin, and Universität der Künste Berlin in 2014.
local international°4 made 19 of its online seminars on social design, crafts, artisanal heritage, and sustainable fashion with international experts and lecturers publicly available.
