Weaving passions together

by Katrina Kalleske

Successfully combining the two very different passions of craftwork and refugee issues into a job could seem like a hard ask but UniSA PhD student Kirsty Darlaston has found a way to do just that.

The School of Art PhD student was fortunate enough to have the solution almost fall into her hands while working on her PhD project.

Her PhD project involved looking at the meanings of craft and making through weaving a community tapestry at her local library, and collecting comments from people who came up to look at the tapestry loom. With her local Woodville library servicing patrons from more than 70 different language groups, it’s not surprising that many of the people who spoke to Kirsty were migrants.

And one local happened to be Rashidi, an Afghani rug weaver who had fled his home country to Iran during the Soviet Invasion and later was forced to flee Iran.

“He was my inspiration to start a new project that combined craftwork with people from refugee backgrounds,” Kirsty said. “He had been weaving for 17 years and left everything behind when he fled political unrest in Iran, and hadn’t been able to find work as a weaver in Australia.

“I thought there must be a way for talented refugees to use their skills.”

Kirsty approached Craftsouth, a peak industry organisation which assists craft, design and visual arts practitioners, and they decided to take the project on. With ArtSA funding and community support they were able to launch the Traditional Craft Skills Project in Adelaide this year. Employed by Craftsouth as the project officer for the project, Kirsty set about finding refugees with craft skills that could be taught to other people.

“It’s about helping traditional craft practitioners reconnect with their craft skills and establish pathways into the broader arts community,” she said.

“We have been doing this through a series of workshops that will link SA artists and community members with craftspeople from culturally diverse backgrounds.

“So far we have held four workshops that have been well received and the feedback has been excellent.”

The workshops have included Bosnian rug-weaving, Eritrean basket weaving, Bangladeshi quilt embroidery and Colombian bark string bag making. Kirsty herself specialises in a European style of pictorial tapestry weaving.

With funding to keep running the workshops until the end of October, Kirsty is hopeful that once she finishes her PhD in March 2011, she can work with Craftsouth again to run a similar project.