About the webinar

Countering legacies of extraction, and appropriation of textile and craft designs, this webinar will focus on the commercial aspects of indigenising fashion and entrepreneurship, where designers are drawing inspiration for new work from deep cultural knowing, and creating platforms to promote the expertise of fellow makers.

Co-hosted by Dr Johnson Witehira and Keita Twist from IDIA.

London: 09:00 - 10:30
Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte: 13:30 - 15:00
Sydney: 18:00 - 19:30
Wellington: 20:00 - 21:30

Speakers

Lucy Simpson is a Sydney based Yuwaalaraay woman, and process-led designer / maker with roots in the North-West of New South Wales. who explores notions of time and place through materiality and visual narratives which record and communicate experience and story. Lucy established studio and textiles label Gaawaa Miyay in 2009 and has exhibited works and presented on cultural design locally and abroad, in a range of communities across the country, and at institutions, events and in galleries including, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Australian Design Centre, the National Art School (Sydney), The London Design Festival and the Smithsonian Institution. Gaawaa Miyay has evolved to include textiles, accessories and homewares ranges; everyday objects with a story to share born of country and infused with the language and story of Yuwaalaraay ngurrambaa (family lands). More recently the studio practice has expanded to encompass First Nations representation and perspectives in non-Indigenous spaces through moments of exchange and transfer with a continuing theme of visual storytelling grounded in place / experience / ecological responsibility / relationships. Find out more.

Selyna Peiris (Attorney-at-Law) is a social entrepreneur and is Director-Business Development at Selyn, Sri Lanka's only fair trade handloom company and one of the country’s largest social enterprises. She is also Director at Selyn Foundation and co-creator of the #BleedGood Movement, a multi-stakeholder collaborative platform to end period poverty in Sri Lanka. As a policy specialist and proven development practitioner, she is also a Co-Founder and Partner at Positive Impact Consultancy and The Institute for Future Creations. She has previously worked for the Government of Sri Lanka and continues to sit in many high-level advisory committees for Government, international organizations, and private sector entities. Most recently, she has been appointed as an Independent Director of World Fair Trade Organisation. As a youth activist, she has spear-headed and worked along many movements working towards a racism free Sri Lanka and continues to be a strong advocate for equitable development especially for the women of Sri Lanka.

Dr Diana Albarrán González is a designer, educator, researcher, craftivist, currently the Programme Director of the PhD in Design at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. Her research explores different ways of collaboration from decolonial, intersectional, and pluriversal perspectives, interested in collective well-being, Indigenous knowledge, crafts-design-arts, textiles, embodiment, and creativity. With over 20 years of international experience, she integrates a meaningful sense of cultural awareness and sensitivity in different contexts, bringing a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) lens to design practice. She holds a PhD in Indigenous Development and Design, a Master’s degree in Design Management and a Bachelor’s in Industrial Design. Find out more.

About Indigenising Design

Indigenising Design is a pan-continent collaboration between designers, academics and changemakers that explore the possibilities beyond a colonised design system. We exist in a world designed predominantly by and for Western norms, reinforcing the vestiges of colonisation. Yet many indigenous practitioners are returning to their ancestral practices to inform their work, introducing a rich alternative to mainstream methodologies.

Indigenising Design aims to bring together like-minded individuals from across the globe to discuss, unpack and explore the ways in which our world is designed. It celebrates indigeneity and the identities, customs, stories and practices that make our indigenous communities unique. Through indigenising our design practices, we actively dismantle the lasting impacts of colonisation in our built and designed spaces. It invites us to dream about and create new realities predicated on equity, fairness and the celebration of indigenous ways of being. Through indigenising design and through practice, we embrace more diverse ways of being and doing.

You can find out more and watched recordings of webinars one and two on the project website.