Local craft communities and open-source designs

A wonderful example of the way new technologies and open-source designs can support and enable craft communities is a design competition being run by a US based textile homeware company. Lulan, work with craft communities in South east Asia to produce their range of products. The competition is to enable other designers to work with these communities producing a range of products for Lulan. 

Lulan will also be creating a database of designs from all the entries and these will be made available under a  Creative Commons license to any artisan who wishes to access them. Judging by the fabric designs on the Lulan website, it would be great to see some more fashion-forward colours and ranges. I guess all the artsian will need is access to the internet and maybe a printer to download the design.

The founder of Lula, Eve Blossom, is described as being " not only committed to sustainable design, but she is also intent on changing business methodologies to create economic options for artisans whether in Southeast Asia or the US".

There have been many examples of designers working in collaboration with artisan communities in developing countries to produce products for the Western market. But it often relies on the designer living closely with the community and once the designer leaves, the communities are left struggling to develop the business and design elements for a commercially successful enterprise.

Atleast with this model, the artisans can have access to a range of fashion-forward designs without needing the designer to keep coming and going. It also saves on carbon emissions as less flying!