[[KHC Newsletter]] **January 27th Newsletter** Dear consortium members, Knowledge House for Craft’s friends and advocates! Please come in! This is our first newsletter: it begins in the Knowledge House’s imaginary courtyard (or _patio_, or _riad_), and ends with a series of pathways from which you can return to your daily interest. The roving editors of this first issue greet you, and hope the following offerings meet your interest. The Knowledge House is 35 months, 10 days old today. Born under the mixed blessings of COVID, it has grown, over the past 30 months, from an informal gathering to an active knowledge-building and sharing platform, with a [board](https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/About), a growing network of [member associations](https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/About), and consortium participants. Our [manifesto](https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/Projects/Manifesto) has guided our activities to date. The vault is a place where a dynamic group of volunteers store articles related to craft and provide House guests with a summary of its key points. This week, three new articles have been added: - Juliette MacDonald; Andrea Peach’s “[Knitted Knockers and the materiality of care](https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/Warp/'Made+with+love%2C+filled+with+hope'.+Knitted+Knockers+and+the+materiality+of+care)”, which centers the therapeutic potential of craft; - Jens Rennstam’s “[Craft and degrowth](https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/Warp/Craft+and+degrowth+-An+exploration+of+craft-orientation+as+a+mode+of+organizing+production+and+consumption)”, in which the author argues that as a labour-intensive practice, craft can compensate for one of the key problems with de-growth: unemployment. - Craig Mackintosh’s “[The Forgotten Energy](https://www.permaculturenews.org/2010/02/25/the-forgotten-energy/)” argues that, as energy supply becomes critical, we need to return to forms of manual labour. At this time, seven articles are under review: thank you Jenan Taylor, Juliette McDonald and Sharon Tang-de Lyster for the work of weaving this scholarship into our vault. You are welcome to join us at the next Reinventing the Wheel conversation: [Follow the algorithm: New journeys through the world of textiles](https://garlandmag.com/loop/algorithm-textiles-interwoven/). Our new consortium member, India’s MAP Academy, will present a new platform for learning about crafts based on artificial intelligence. Register for 22 February 12:30pm (India time) [here](https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIvf-yrrDorEt3EnqrSUybDS2jkX2u6TRve). Finally, this newsletter is also a vehicle to pose questions that we have been ruminating. We have been thinking over time about the meaning of "house" as a place for knowledge. We've been considering not only its structure, but also the culture that underpins its community. At its most basic, it is a place to share information. The word 'house' has multiple meanings in relation to craft practice, craft repositories, craft communities: those interconnections are both simple but also very complex. The second question that occupies us concerns the role of the handmade in an industrial society. Industry promises to reproduce products previously made by hand more efficiently and consistently. What then is the place of the handmade product, which is inefficiently produced and of variable quality? See related references on our [website](https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/Weft/Questions/Question+-+What+is+the+role+of+the+handmade+in+an+industrial+society). The sections below are a place where consortium and board members are sharing our current readings, our activities, and opportunities that concern us or our colleague: thank you for having sent us your material to flesh out this first KHC newsletter. Best regards from the roving editorial team, Laila Al Hamad (Kuwait) / Sharon Tsang-de Lyster (Hong-Kong) / Kevin Murray (Melbourne) / Ben Lignel (Montreuil) ![[Pasted image 20230201164628.png]] Illustration: Laila Al-Hamad 1. **Activities from the network members** • Sharon Tsang-de Lyster's **cultural sustainability project with refugees and asylum seeker**s in Hong Kong is currently on display in【 "always" Exhibition】50+ Sustainable Designs Thinking Beyond Green【「常行」展覽】 超越「環保」的設計思維. This project explores many unchartered territories, both in participatory designs and in exploring the therapeutic value of crafts amongst the displaced. Through a series of cultural-based design and product development training, refugees and asylum seekers express their rich cultural identities and memories of homes through a coached journey of memory-mining, self-narration, and material experimentation. [See details](https://narrativemade.com/projects/always). • Aarti Kawlra Recently published an article in the UNESCO volume on **the Silk Roads** released last year. The article, which is co-authored with S. Sarkar, is titled “Hybrid creature motifs as cross-cultural transmission along the Silk Roads”. The entire volume, Textiles and Clothing along the Silk Road, is edited by Zhao Feng and Marie Louise Nosch. Aarti’s essay can be found on pp 209-228, 2022. Link to [free online platform](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000382993.locale=en). • LOkesh will be offering [**a talk in Grizedale Arts**](https://lakedistrictfarmersarms.com/whats-on/lokesh-ghai-textile-artist-educator-researcher-talks-finding-warmth-through-traditional-indian-crafts/), they are very much interested in the notion of 'useful-crafts', also connected to Ruskin house in the Lake District. • Linda S. McIntosh was awarded a 1-year grant from the Endangered Material Knowledge Program. Linda and her co-investigators, Yulianti Peni and Julius Alelang, will document the textile production of the Alurung ethnic group, Alor Regency, Indonesia, via video and other types of recordings. 2. **Sharing items of interest** **The Great Simplification**  This [podcast](https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/) features stories about human 'overshoot', in which a one-off bounty of fossil fuel is being blown with hyper-consumption. It regularly referred to the need for a change to our culture and it is tempting to think of how craft could play a role in a post-growth civilisation. (Kevin Murray) **Apurimac, the god that speaks**, dir. Miguel Mato, Aleph Media & Un Mundo de Sensaciones, 2019. Apurimac is the name of a river in Peru that can be crossed by the last Inca bridge that exists today. The bridge is renovated once a year. Artisan communities in the area gather to work together. Women and children make large strings of vegetable fiber from local pasture, then the men sew the bridge. Argentine director Miguel Mato focuses on the sensations and the weaving of plant fiber as the sound of the grasses bending in the hands of artisans of all ages. Link ([free with registration](https://play.cine.ar/INCAA/produccion/6038)) (Roxana Amarilla) **[Making a Tourist Town](https://dilettantearmy.com/articles/making-a-tourist-town)**, by Shinjini Dey, in _Weak Aesthetics_, Dilettante Army, 2023. Building on Sianne Nai’s work on weak aesthetic, and her argument that three minor aesthetic categories – the zany, the cute and the interesting - uniquely reflect modes of production and meaning-making in late capitalism, the author looks at the representation of labor in the tourist town of Darjeeling. Some of the visual tropes developed by the East India Company - notably the representation of the mountainous countryside as an Alpine paradise – survive in what she calls a “tourist landscape.” Our members will be interested in Dey’s analysis of craft’s role in the production and reproduction of an aesthetic of meaningful labor. In passing, I would suggest you sign up for [Dilettante Army,](https://dilettantearmy.com/) the brainchild of labor, craft and food scholar Sara Clugage: it is excellent. (Ben Lignel) There has been a flurry of articles this past week about **Ajami, a writing system connected to Arabic**. A cursory review demonstrates that this is now an entirely new topic, and I cannot speak to how this current interest speaks to a shift in understanding. The article [Unearthed Ajami Script](https://www.futurity.org/ajami-script-2859702-2/) shares an overview of one scholar's work - and ways in which this writing system challenges colonial misconceptions regarding literacy. It seems that literature, poetry and more has been composed, and makes me curious to understand how craft might be examined through the text and translations. Sharing in case anyone is working on craft in Senegal and other areas in Africa. Here is the second article link: [Fallou Ngom discovers Ajami African Writing System](https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing-system/) (Namita Wiggers) **Standing up for core professional competencies.** At the beginning of 2022, a rebellion culminated at The Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. Among other things, the students were dissatisfied with the downgrading of the workshops and the content of the education. [Here](https://formkraft.dk/en/standing-up-for-core-professional-competencies/%20(Helle%20Dyrlund%20Severinsen)), two students talk about the reason for the student rebellion and the subsequent cooperation with the Academy. 3. **Opportunities for the network** • An open call for **book proposals** is available on the website of Amsterdam University Press (AUP) [[Humanities across Borders]] A Methodologies Book Series of which I am co-series editor. - [See details](https://www.aup.nl/en/series/humanities-across-borders). (Aarti Kawlra) • Design Trust Seeds Grant and Feature Grant - Hong Kong Type: Research Grant Application due: 20 April 2023 Duration: Flexible Award: HK$50,000 / HK$300,000 Design Trust offers grants to individual designers, curators, collectives and non-profit organisations for projects and activities that are relevant to various design disciplines. These grants support projects relevant to the context and content of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. [See details](https://designtrust.hk/grants/dtgrants/). (Sharon Tsang-de Lyster) **We hope to see you in the Knowledge House:** [](https://garlandmag.com/loop/algorithm-textiles-interwoven/) --- Knowledge House for Craft [https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/](https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/)