Artisans’ Circular Design Lab

Long description

In Brazil, as in other developing countries, large groups of people have come to rely on waste for their livelihoods. Among those are local artisans who combine the abundance of urban waste materials with creativity and ingenuity to generate value from what’s available.

This work is often met with too little or too much criticism: too little when it’s praised as a “solution”, without acknowledging the need for systemic approaches in the design of materials and products themselves, or that some processes artisans employ may contaminate materials, rendering them landfill-bound in the long run. And too much, when such handicraft is minimized or even ridiculed as “ugly”, tasteless, or ineffective.

The Artisans’ Circular Design Lab will be a pilot online experience to offer inspiration, support, empowerment and connection for small producers to make better products using upcycled materials and clean production technologies.

The intention is to implement/optimize circular design principles in their creative practice, offering clear criteria and hands-on experimentation in search for diverse, elegant and intentional handcrafted design solutions, ensuring materials aren’t contaminated or lose value in the process.

Carla Tennenbaum, the lead facilitator, has 20+ years experience researching and developing such solutions with artisans, as well as teaching circular design principles as co-founder of Ideia Circular, a pioneer online education and communication platform based in São Paulo.

If successful, the pilot will be the basis for a streamlined program to be offered to a broader audience, sharing the best of Brazilian creativity in manual transformation technologies.

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