¡No más! A Call for Designers to Stop Recolonizing Artisan Communities in Emerging Economies

Abstract

Although globally the artisan sectora is the second largest employer in many emerging economies, and is valued at more than $750 billion dollars1, most artisansb are underemployed and socially marginalized.2 Traditional artisans in these countries primarily occupy lower income levels, indigenous communities are often at the margins of contemporary consumer-producer society, and overall digital and literacy divides create a dependence on intermediaries (individuals and organizations who command higher salaries) to support production, quality control, shipping, and baking; amongst other fundamental aspects of running a craft-based business. This article critically examines the roles that artisan sector brandc founders and designersd have played in maintaining this inequitable status quo, and suggests how their contributions may be reimagined in the service of social, political, and economic justice and in ways that can help artisans around the world realize grater benefit(s). This position paper has been co-authored by a founder of an accessories brand which has actively engaged in co-creation with indigenous artisans in Colombia, a designer who works as a creative consultant across the Colombian artisan sector, and a design educator and social activist who has conducted primary and secondary research about the global artisan sector. It summarizes a common design process used in commerce-based engagements between designers and artisans, and suggests that the "solutions" these yield are extractive and even recolonizing.e Additionally, this piece examines and interrogates how designers and their work on behalf of well-branded clients (such as Macy's3, Levi's4, IKEA5, and Kate Spade6, to name but a few examples) that utilize intermediaries such as brokers, buyers, and exporters to source craft goods produced by artisans the world over contributes to their economic marginalization. The authors' 25+ years of combined project-based experience in design is informed by a diverse set of perspectives, which span a spectrum of working within the academy and working on behalf of a variety of non-for-profit and for-profit businesses. The work we have undertaken with artisan communities of weavers, beaders, and quiltmakers in Colombia, Guatemala, and the United States confirms that intermediaries are complicit in maintaining a well-established status quo among artisans that tends to result in their being impoverished and exploited. If designers and the founders of artisan brands are in fact committed to improving the livelihoods of the artisans with whom they work, they must decide to either initiate and then sustain a radical shift in how they engage with artisan communities or stop seeking goods from them altogether. To support this idea, we are calling for designers to radically change how they engage with artisans as they collaborate on the making and marketing of products in ways that prioritize sustainable futures for themselves and their children. We also invite designers to consider how much artisan communities (especially indigenous groups) can teach us about planning and engaging in more sustainable ways of working that are centered around processes that yield mutual benefits and that foster more equitable collaborations. Our goal is to promote sustainability and decolonization, and, parallel with this, to guide and fuel socio-cultural, political, and economic justice and a fairer and more equitable future for artisans working and living around the world.