Gwendolyn Kulick
Gwendolyn Kulick taught design from 2004 until 2015 at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore / Pakistan. Since 2016 she teaches design theory at the German University Cairo, first at the Berlin Campus and since 2018 at the Cairo Campus in Egypt.
In her PhD research she looks at Pakistan’s craft sector from a systems perspective, analysing structures, processes and mind-sets that drive it but also pose barriers for sustainable and ethical practices. Between 2011 and 2017 in a case study she looked at projects of different character and scale, from large internationally funded aid schemes to small private initiatives, and in an action research project conducted a small collaboration with home-based women embroiderers near her campus. Fruitful stakeholder conversations were encouraged through focus groups and numerous interviews and field visits. Gwendolyn’s research engaged with a number of stakeholders in Pakistan’s craft sector, including craft producers who were mainly home-based women workers doing embroidery, patchwork and stitching; NGO project managers; community coordinators; academics in the field of art and design, including both faculty and students; social entrepreneurs; designers who include craft elements in their collections; and private people who drive their own small initiatives and craft businesses.
She explains how in her view the pandemic will affect the crafts sector in Pakistan,
“In general, I think that the negative impact might be lesser than I expected on the first thought. In a way in Pakistan people always face infrastructural challenges and barriers, also often in an ad hoc manner. They also have very efficient capabilities to work around them, improvise whenever needed and come up with clever, context relevant, solutions.
Otherwise I believe that:
– One challenge could be that craft producers and / or their family members fall ill and cannot work, or worse, die. Craft producers usually live in poorer and more marginalized circumstances and might generally be hit harder.
– The productivity will not be reduced tremendously because craftspeople often work from home anyways. Their challenge might be to receive material and deliver completed work.
– Designers and design students and faculty cannot easily travel to the communities of craft producers, especially not to those located remotely, and hence the craft producers cannot travel to the designers as well. This makes collaborative product development more difficult.
– Similarly NGO led projects might face travel restrictions for trainings.
– It will strengthen the ability to communicate digitally, which people even in remote areas are already doing. But using digital communication as an essential tool might increase the acceptance of doing it even more in the future as well.
– In times when everyone, including potential customers, focus more on the home environment, orders for e.g. home textiles might increase. “
Gwendolyn suggests some ways of overcoming the challenges posed by the pandemic on the crafts sector in Pakistan,
“The challenges of the delivery of raw material and completed products can be overcome by a well-coordinated transport system, in which the few involved people apply social distancing and hygiene standards. Moreover, the communication challenges between craft producers in remote areas and supportive collaborators could be addressed through using more digital communication. Obviously, it cannot make up for feeling certain materials but if people have already worked together before they know what they communicate about. This is only problematic for initiating new collaborations, where personal interaction might be important.”
