the workshop

The workshop will happen during the three first weeks of April 2009

The objectives of the workshops

1. To give the Saharawis an opportunity to express themselves, their culture and their know-how.

2. To give the Saharawis an opportunity to design and produce pieces of jewellery in order to sell them and generate an income.

3. To improve their environment by reducing litter in the area through the recycling of discarded plastic bottles.

4. To make the Saharawis appreciate more the value of production from recycled material from both an environmental and economic perspective.

5. To produce unique products resulting from the encounter between the Saharawi culture and a French designer who lives and studies in London. The project will be a great way for the Saharawis to share their culture and knowledge internationally. They will benefit from the designer’s know-how and solutions to kick start the whole process, to recycle their litter, to manage a project and help them to market it and sell it. For the designer, this will be a fantastic discovery of a people which has a difficult and painful history which it uses to express itself artistically. After having developed some jewellery models from her own, this will be incredibly interesting to see what design will emerge from this creative collaboration across two cultures. The project will not only be a fantastic multicultural artistic experience, but it will also be an experiment that could contribute and enrich ideas about the process of creation itself.

6. To raise awareness about the Saharawis’ condition, using what may be the most powerful tools: art and design.

Hard outcomes:

-30 people will be trained in the technique and have new skills needed to create jewellery produced with plastic bottles -The participants will have fine finished jewellery products to sell and generate an income

-This workshop will have laid the basis for running future workshops with the Saharawi refugee in cross cultural collaboration design and technical development.

Soft outcome:

-The participants will have gained confidence in developing their own aesthetic approach using a new technique.

After the workshop
This one month stay should result in the setting up of a permanent workshop. The pieces of jewellery designed during the one month workshop will be produced on a regular basis. A supply of material will be organised to carry on the production according to the success of this project, the interest of the people and the sales made. After the production launching, it will still be possible to develop new models for the jewels, namely thanks to the experience gained with the material.