Beyond 'Nourishing the Soul of a Nation': Craft in the Context of South Africa

Conference paper presented to the Making Futures: The Crafts as Change Maker in Sustainably Aware Cultures conference, Devon in September 2011 and subsequently published in the online journal.

The aims of the Making Futures research conferences are to improve understanding of the ways in which the contemporary crafts are practiced in relation to significant and new developing agendas relating to global environmental and sustainability issues. Also to try to discern whether these new imperatives present opportunities for the crafts to redefine and reconstitute themselves as less marginalised, more centrally productive forces in society; and to explore how the crafts, and creative making practices more generally, function as agents of change.

This paper was presented in response to the theme Local-global Translations and Dialogues... What are the tensions and flows expressed in craft making and craft consumption in the supposedly 'post-colonial' contexts of contemporary global capitalism and its possible futures? How do we specify ethical and sustainable craft issues in relation to the sensibilities emerging in the movements and stresses between traditional cultures and modernity, between rural and urban cultures, between local, regional, national and global levels of interaction and translation, between notions of authenticity, cultural heritage and identity derived under the influence of Western and non-Western markets, aesthetics and agencies?

Abstract

There has always been a close link between craft and the economic empowerment of marginalised people in developing world countries. However, the South African government has recently taken an explicit step forward in optimising the contribution of craft as a powerful engine of economic growth and promoting development in a globalising world. The traditional paradigm of NGOs working with community based organisations to instigate craft interventions is changing, no more so than in South Africa.

This paper gives a brief overview of the context of craft in South Africa, focusing on two current grassroots craft producer groups in the Kwa-Zulu Natal region - the Siyazama Project and Umcebo Trust - and discusses the future of craft in South Africa. It stems from my practice-based PhD researching the role of practice in collaboration between designers and craft producers in South Africa.

The Siyazama Project was founded in 1999 to inform and educate a small group of rural women traditional bead doll makers on the concerns and taboos surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Today the project functions as a bead craft collective. Umcebo Trust was set up in 2003 as a non-profit organisation and has recently taken the decision to revise this and become a ‘for profit’ business, although their core philosophy of empowering those marginalised in society to develop their creativity as a means of development and income generation stays the same.

This paper examines these current craft methodologies and investigates whether they are able to address the South African government’s assertion that craft and the creative industries can move ‘beyond nourishing the soul of a nation’ (DAC 2011, p.7).