At the concourse of the Cubbon Park metro station, a half-finished miniature version of the Bhavani Jamakkalam, a traditional woven carpet from Erode, Tamil Nadu, was stretched across the small table loom. Crowds milled around it, wanting to try their hand at weaving, one after the other. Scraps of old fabric were being shuttled across the thick, white threads of the warp, entwining the two into a single integrated varicoloured unit, a reimagination of an ancient craft tradition that has always brought people together. 

This community weaving workshop was one of several conducted as part of Crafting Change, an initiative by the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology hosted under the institute’s Art in Transit initiative, a collaboration with BMRCL. The initiative, which opened in the city on October 2 to mark Gandhi Jayanti, consisted of a series of workshops on mending and eco-printing and two exhibits on Deccani Wool and Brown Cotton, enabling visitors to “immerse themselves in various activities associated with crafting life into textile, mindfully and consciously,” as the event’s release put it. 

Sangamithra M, a fourth-year undergraduate student at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology (SMI) who facilitated this community weaving workshop, talks about its raison d’etre. Craft brings people together, so this workshop, which reinterprets an age-old craft tradition, enabled people to appreciate its history and actively participate in creating a new piece that reflects togetherness, says Sanghamitra, who chose to explore the craft of Jamakkalam. “Though I grew up in Chennai, my roots are in Erode where the colourful Jamakkalam is woven,” she says, pointing out that the carpet was once an integral part of Tamil households though its presence is now diminishing. “This drove me to explore and reinterpret the craft.”

Commuters try their hand at weaving the Bhavani Jamakkalam

Not surprisingly, conversations around handloom and handcrafted textiles were crucial to the first edition of Crafting Change on Gandhi Jayanti, offering an opportunity to celebrate the philosophy of khadi and the importance of handmade, self-resilient textile systems.  As Yash Bhandari, a faculty member at SMI, says, people often forget that one of the first significant independence movements in this country involved the independent production of cloth, “right from spinning it to weaving and wearing it.” To date, it should be a reminder of the memory and objective of a movement that gave India its identity, he adds. 

Swati Maskeri, Head of Studies, Industrial Arts & Design Practices (IADP), SMI, who co-curated Crafting Change with Sadhvi Jawa and Saumya Singh, feels the initiative is important for yet another reason: to highlight the wastefulness and harm the textile and fashion industry is causing to the environment.“Art in Transit gave us the scope to bring it out into the public domain and engage the public with these ideas,” she says.  

Brown Cotton exhibit at the previous edition of Crafting Change.

Second edition

Crafting Change, a second edition of which is all set to open on October 19, running between 11 am and 2 pm, has its origins in a seventh-semester pre-thesis project, which is being facilitated by Jawa for textile students in the IADP program. “The project is about looking at the impact that the fashion and textile industry has on the environment,” says Jawa. It is also about examining and rebuilding society’s relationship with clothes, something “fast fashion has reduced,” she says. “The reason why there is so much use-and-throw is that people do not feel connected with their clothes anymore.”

These students have spent the past few months immersing themselves in these ideas, watching films related to it, speaking to craftspeople to understand how the circular economy works, and acquainting themselves with slow craft techniques like mending and eco-printing, among other things. “They are looking at all these practices that existed earlier that were in sync with the environment and the community…how slow craft was a way of life,” she says. “It was a wonderful revelation for them, and they are all willing to take this forward.”

Jawa says putting all this out in a public space is also an attempt to raise awareness about these practices. “There has to be knowledge sharing, which has stopped because of fast fashion. These craft skills were once transferred from one generation to another,” she says. “We don’t want to keep knowledge in the classroom. We want to share it.” 

An eco-dye workshop takes place at the previous edition of Crafting Change. | Photo Credit: HANDOUT E MAIL

Take Ruhi Bhalerao, a fourth-year student at SMI, who will conduct a workshop called FabricFootprints, focusing on the psychological motivations underlying why people buy and discard clothes. “I want to engage in a conversation while collecting data,” says Bhalerao. This community data collection project explores people’s relationship with their clothes and how they have changed. “Clothes are like journals. They carry our memories and experiences, and we share a close bond with them,” she says. 

And yet, our current consumption patterns are unsustainable, she reiterates. “We used to buy only five pieces of clothes in a year. Today, it can go up to 52 to 68,” says Bhalerao, who will convert the data collected into a community paper quilt. “By transforming this data into textile art, we aim to visually represent the stories of these clothes, highlighting their social and environmental impact,” she says. “I would like my project to bring people together and address these issues…talk about it, think about it, make more people aware of it. That is my current goal.”

Mending workshop at the previous edition of Crafting Change.

A changing clothing culture

Maskeri remembers growing up in a different time, when clothes were often passed on from older cousins and siblings, and mending was prevalent. “I remember, in my childhood, we never bought clothes like we do now,” she says. “Clothes were bought, you know, for special occasions like festivals or birthdays. It was not like an ongoing thing.” 

However, consumerist culture has transformed our relationship with clothes and how we purchase them, believes Maskeri. “There was a certain novelty or excitement... the anticipation of waiting for Diwali or your birthday to buy new clothes. That novelty has gone because everyone is buying all the time,” she says.

Fast fashion, she points out, has made everything very cheap, so people have become accustomed to buying seemingly inexpensive clothes. “But something else has paid for them, right?’ she remarks wryly. “The environment and the earth have paid for this cheap clothing we are all wearing.” Singh echoes this perspective. Handmade, handwoven clothes are often perceived as too expensive, but “I think that the one thing that we forget is that people were never meant to consume at the pace we’re consuming,” she says. While fast fashion means that the financial cost of a garment is low, the cost is borne by someone else in the value chain, whether it be “people who are being underpaid or resources which are being depleted,” she says. 

A critical aspect of this initiative has been examining age-old material and cultural practices rooted in sustainability.  “I think the idea that you can have few but precious clothes…instead of buying 20, could you just buy 5 or 7 or 10 handmade, handwoven garments and use those for a longer time is something that we need to revisit,” says Maskeri. 

Additionally, as we confront a major existential dilemma because of the perfect storm of climate change, pollution and depleting natural resources, turning to our living heritage like Deccani Wool and Brown Cotton is essential, argues Singh, a textile and material designer at SMI’s Centres of Excellence. “They are closely interlinked with cultural practices, which ensure ecological balance in a larger realm that works against nature,” she says. “These movements are important in today’s time, specifically when it comes to standing strong in the face of fast fashion, which leads to many exploitative activities at an environmental and human level.” 

Singh firmly believes that for change to occur, a larger shift in ideology is needed where “you’re starting to look more consciously at how you live your life, how you’re consuming, what you’re consuming. “ Change, after all, is impossible to achieve overnight. But starting conversations about how we consume, something the initiative hopes to kickstart, could make a difference, she feels. “If we involve ourselves in conversation, bring more awareness about the sort of carbon footprint that some materials may have or how it is affecting certain communities, it will slowly percolate down to how we want to lead our lives.”