Threading Gond with one Digital Swing at a Time
How the artisan sector can benefit from engagement with stakeholders from creative fields and civil society
Post Covid-19, economic recovery across various industries is estimated to be long and hard. Given its self-organised nature, the artisan sector has been rather badly hit. On the other hand, every crisis can be an opportunity in disguise. For instance, after the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, artisans in Kutch expanded their business with new ideas, product ranges and materials. Disasters nudge human beings to collaborate. For a while, they forget their differences and work for the larger good. Amidst the despair and uncertainty of the pandemic, one of the silver linings has been the way civil society came together to help out the worst affected.
While organisations and networks within the artisan sector existed even before the pandemic, the sector is too large and diverse to represent its interests in a cohesive manner. Moreover, existing networks comprised mainly of artisans and artisan groups. In 2020, we saw emerging collaborative spaces for various stakeholders of the creative ecosystem. Artisan groups, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, designers, marketplaces, buyers and architects as well as industry bodies—came together spontaneously on various platforms. Creative Dignity was one such. It was a magical moment when everyone was there to support one another without any ego or desire for recognition. Consequently, marketplaces and buyers came forward to help sell stock, design institutes engaged students to help artisans build catalogues and learn photography and social entrepreneurs and NGOs found peer support for their queries and dilemmas. People were able to air long standing issues of the sector, connect and be heard. It became obvious that everyone stood to gain if we watched out for each other and the most vulnerable among us, the artisans.
And so, we could together, raise our concerns when the Sabyasachi x H&M row emerged. It was not because we wanted to target only Sabyasachi. Nor to say that digitisation, other forms of mechanisation or mass manufacture that excluded artisans while evoking their practices, had not happened before. It was however to bring attention to issues that have always beset the sector, despite an array of laws meant to protect artisans. Artisan practices have always been dynamic and evolving. Fashion designers have played an important role in bringing visibility and pushing borders of creative expression. It has in fact become a trend of working with artisans, and/ or to become a sustainable brand with ethical practices. But how much of this understanding needs to be unpacked? How easy or how hard is it to indeed be sustainable, to establish best practices? With this coming together of diverse stakeholders, we have an opportunity to explore these perspectives and build consensus far more easily than we could have earlier.
The Sabyasachi x H&M incident is framed in a bigger debate– an opportunity for us to examine what has historically diminished the value of artisanal work, what continues to challenge its progress, and what can make artisans equal partners in the prosperity of a creative economy. I hope that we can have sustained discussions, listen to every concern and viewpoint, think together to recalibrate old systems of production and perception to make them more inclusive, more sustainable and kinder to people and the planet. And where best practices already exist, to learn from them.
It would be so wonderful, if as an outcome of this debate, all of us (I hope Sabyasachi too participates) can co-create the guidelines for an inclusive creative industry where the cultural capital of each creative practitioner is credited and safeguarded, not only by law, but by social contract. It would be one more proof of our ability to imagine new ways of being.
Meera Goradia has 30 years of work experience in the artisan sector and is currently the network anchor of Creative Dignity.
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