Enabling Cross-Cultural Dialogues as a tool for Co-Design – Building Equitable Knowledge Exchange Through Creative Textile Connectivity

In May 2022 rural women weavers from the Jaipur Rug Foundation and BA Textile Design students from CSM, embarked on a design project exploring new channels of knowledge exchange and remote co-creation.

This paper reflects on the project’s aim to facilitate non-hierarchical creative dialogues between international design students and artisan-weavers from the Global South to co-design a collection of handwoven rugs. Participants challenged existing stereotypes and hierarchies, through a process of mapping textile skills and design methods as well as inviting storytelling, gaining a richer understanding of the material and social networks afforded by their diverse contexts. Together they negotiated different cultural starting points towards the development of twelve co-designed rugs using visual, material-based and digital communication methods.

The authors discuss future skill sets for designers and artisans to effectively navigate a rapidly changing global design culture, to reposition themselves within complex power dynamics. Challenges and opportunities for cross-cultural co-design and creative dialogues are identified as connected to existing Western-centric design school thinking such as individual authorship and a linear generic design development process. If textiles can become a tool for social connectivity, how can design educators enable their students to learn non-hierarchical communication and design facilitation methods to develop inclusive and diverse design mindsets?

The paper concludes by proposing new evolved pedagogies including the ethics of design collaborations, visual storytelling, empathy building as well as connecting local heritage to post-colonial contemporary global design culture as key considerations to move towards more inclusive teaching approaches.