After 5 weeks of working on the The Positive Project with HIV/AIDS, Waste and Fair Trade the 18 students from the class shared their thoughts and ideas in their personally projects as part of the exhibition ‘Art and the Environment’, where also student who had been in Ghana are showing videowork and pitures from 4 weeks in Kumasi. All of this is at the cantina at the Designschool Kolding, open until 9′ th of December.

Check out rapport from the expo made by Katharina Kløve from national radio: news site.

The purpose of The Positive Project is to develop design solutions, that generate funds for AIDS medicine for Positive refuges in the Buduburam Refuge Camp. For this people to survive, and in the long term create a future for themselves and their family.

For about three years FairTrade Designers have been working together with FairTrade Denmark on The Fair Danish Design project. We have now done the first trip, designers and importers together and sometime next year we hope to show the two collections from “House by the Sea” and “Just Business”.

Theme “Craft’s Future”

Since the 1990s, Zimbabwe’s development stalled and almost gone back. This has led the country from a leadership position in South Africa to be one of the poorest countries. When the inflation, in July 2008, was 231 million percent it were one of the worlds highest. Today 85 pct. of the population in Zimbabwe lives in poverty, and unemployment’s is right now above 80 pct. The health – and education system was once among the best in Africa but is now in ruins, just like other systems, such as postal and electricity, is completely worn down and not functioning. Zimbabwe’s poverty is disastrous both economically and socially. Corruption, political violence and oppression are part of everyday life for most people. The talented and clever people we were so fortunate to work with on our workshop in Chitungwiza Art Center, made a big impression on us.

FairTrade Designers are working to strengthen the participants through training. We try to give them an insight into new ways to run their business. Through training of market understanding, marketing and technical drawing, we hope to equip them, to step into the market for ethical design that is FairTrade Designers trajectory. We custom design each workshop to all our current projects, and we base our work on exactly what our participants are god at. The concrete results of the workshop will shortly be available here on the blog. Please feel free to ask questions or comment on our work.

FairTrade Designers are presenting the ‘Scandinavian design style and market’ for the artists  from Chitungwiza Art Center, where fine art stone workers are usually carving sculptures. But on this workshop, FairTrade Designers Pil and Henriette are explaining about design and the design-market in Scandinavia, for the purpose of cooperation on design-products made for this market.

At the workshop we work with mood-boards and design-processes and later carving in stone.

At International Fair Trade Day in 2008 FairTrade Designers (FTD) meet Ida Ljunggren, now manager of Fair Trade Danmark, and found out that we shared the goal of connecting Design and Fair Trade. Shortly after this meeting Ida started working for Fair Trade Denmark (FT DK), and FTD  and FT DK started a project to match designers and importers with the purpose of creating new designed fair trade products. FairTrade Designers, was already engaged in Fair Trade production in China and productions of  designs made in FSC wood from Ghana. Doing ’09 and ’10 we all continued working on how to set up the relation, communication and the co-operation in the project. And now, finally we are proud to be one of the two first pilotprojects, when SUP: Søren Ulrik Petersen and Jonas Pedersen are going to work with FSC wood in co-operation with Simplemente Madera i Nicaragua, and we are going to Zimbabwe to work with stones.

This summer FairTrade Designers visited Alice Jul Jørgensen at Huset ved Havet on her beautiful shop terrace over viewing the sea. Here we planned workshops and traveling to Chitungwiza to work with the skilled stonemason at the Chitungwiza Arts Centre. There FairTrade Designers will make workshops to exchange experience and knowledge with the gifted craftsmen and develop new fair trade design products.

I løbet af sommeren har FairTrade Designers været på besøg hos Alice i ‘Huset ved Havet’ på Østfyn, Bøsørevej 54, Revsøre, Hesselager. Vi skulle kigge på sten fra Zimbabwe og tale planlægning af rejse og workshop for i slutningen af august, rejser vi sammen af sted for at starte et nyt projekt op. Fyn er jo fin og det var en smuk tur derover, og selve ‘Huset ved Havet’ er bestemt et besøg værd med de mange fine, velvalgte varer fra Afrika.

Og det er med stor glæde, at vi netop har modtaget meddelelsen om,  at vores PunPillow og Bryllups Såler er udråbt som vindere.

Her udsnit af deres pressemedelelse:

Designer-trio løb med årets Fair Trade Design Award

Prisen, der uddeles for bedste kombination af unikt design og kvalitet, innovation og social impact, gik til de tre kreative kvinder, for deres broderede puder og ”bryllupssåler”, produceret af kvinder i Kinas Yunnan provins.

De tre dommere i konkurrencen, Thomas Adamsen, ejer og stifter af Pilgrim, Frederikke Aagaard, selvstændig kurator og TV-vært, og Karen Blincoe, formand for Danske Designere var helt enige: ”De her to produkter er et godt eksempel på, at Fair Trade ikke behøver være kedeligt og urtet, men derimod sagtens kan være farvefuldt, trendy, attraktivt – og kommercielt!”

”Bryllupssålerne” er stærkt inspireret af lokal håndværkstradition og kultur i Yunnan-provinsen, hvor moderen til bruden før et bryllup laver såler til alle gæster. Puderne, der er lavet af håndfarvet hamp af høj kvalitet, har farvestrålende broderier der bl.a. af de kvindelige producenters navne, samt silhuet af deres hænder. Begge dele er, ifølge de tre dommere, en ”god form for empowerment” – alt i alt, smukke, æstetiske produkter med en god historie.