Creative Textile Project and the CKP

Creative Textile is the current ongoing project of ITKIUS. This project has the main aim of preserving, narrating and sharing textile traditions and their ancient techniques in order to create a cross-pollination  project among textile artisans of different background and nationality. In line with the Declaration of San Cristóbal de Las Casas this project could be easily expanded to other territories famous for their textile traditions and to the UNESCO Creative City Network as a new intra-cluster and intra-network project.

The benefits of this project are several:

• To document and preserve ancient traditions and knowledges

The project offers the opportunity to study and document traditional knowledge as it is creatively applied in various territories around the world. This collection of information could be transferred into training manuals and through  Augmented Reality technology  could help to support the professional development of future generations and the survival of local traditions within several community

• To engage communities and territories known for their traditional textile techniques into a common purpose
• To create a stronger relation among communities around the world:

The project creates relations and opens new scenarios of cultural collaborations among cities and their artisans. Through the Creative Knowledge Platform artisans can exchange ideas and establish new forms of collaboration, as it has already happened for the bakers, millers and farmers involved in the Breads of the Creative Cities project.

The project tries to fulfill some of the UN  Sustainable Development Goals and more specifically:

The first application of this project has been an exchange of traditions between the artisans from San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, and Como, Italy.

The city of Como sent to San Cristóbal de Las Casas several pieces of silk, that were embroidered with the typical tools and the ancient work techniques of the Mayan descendants living now in Mexico.

The city of San Cristóbal sent typical Maya’s patterns, usually embroidered on the traditional Mexican clothes, back to Como where the local designers elaborated them in a completely innovative way and created a new product (more info). 

This cross-pollination project was officially presented during the XIII Annual Conference of UNESCO Creative Cities.

The Creative Knowledge Platform was developed to:

• Tell the stories, the traditions and the ancient techniques of the Knowledge Keepers.
• Document the creative processes of the Knowledge Keepers through a mix of texts, interviews, photos and video contents.