PROJECT: Kyrgyz Traditional Artisan Project - KYRGYZ REPUBLIC 2007

PROBLEM: Traditional skills and knowledge among nomadic people of Kyrgyzstan were being lost as older artisans passed away without being able to transfer their knowledge and skills to younger generations. In Kyrgyz nomadic culture, artisanal skills were originally learned by children as they helped adults with various tasks associated with the making of a craft. Older masters needed to find new ways to share their knowledge with younger generations due to changes in the way children were being raised and educated in their culture. The main aim of this project was to design an educational resource to help preserve Kyrgyz textile traditions, in particular the felt-making traditions of the Issyk- Kul region.

CONTEXT: When Kyrgyzstan was part of the Soviet Union, traditional craft production was banned.. People were discouraged or prevented from operating private businesses or using their hands for craft production. Craft production went "underground" in order to preserve traditional knowledge and skills but many important craft traditions were lost. At the time of this project, the Kyrgyz people, having gained their independence, were looking to revive their craft traditions in order to meet a need for sustainable economic development. The few remaining craft masters were aging and passing on without being able to pass on all their knowledge and skills to future generations and this weighed heavily on them. Language and literacy barriers and lack of financial resources made many educational media inaccessible or impossible.

PROCESS: The original plan was to photo/video document the traditional Kyrgyz felt-making processes in order to preserve this knowledge for future generations. Following a UNESCO publication about how to properly document a traditional craft I travelled to the Kyrgyz Republic with cameras and video equipment to be able to capture the step-by-step processes involved in making wool felt. 

It did not take long before the local people urged me to come out from behind my camera and join them in making the felt because according to the masters - the only way to truly learn a skill was to become actively involved and gain hands-on experience. This greatly influenced the type of educational resource I ended up developing. After initially following a UNESCO guide to documenting traditional crafts, I soon realized that visual representation (photographs and even video) could not effectively transmit some of the more physical and tangible aspects of traditional craft making and the deeper meaning of symbols and colours and other cultural references were also difficult to represent visually.

After my initial research trip, I experimented with different ways of representing different aspects of traditional felt making as educational resources. I tried comic book style illustration, automated models and finally drew on my own culture of Western embroidery and quit samplers as a way to teach and practice the art of traditional Kyrgyz felt carpet making.

OUTCOME: I was supposed to return to share my finished design with the Masters and involve them in a workshop on transferring their knowledge through the making of "carpet samplers" but political unrest at the time the project was nearing completion prevented me from returning in person so I documented my design and shared a recommendation report with my project partners to conduct the workshop on my behalf. From what I understand from my contacts is that the sampler design was shared with the Masters along with an explanation of how to use it for teaching other women. Many of the Masters improved on my initial design and some created different sampler carpets that they could use to teach different topics and skills. A women's craft cooperative was formed and the Masters taught younger women (mostly single mothers) how to make felt and they were supported by the local tourism organizations and a local artisan gallery.

ROLE/S: Researcher, Instructional Designer, Community Facilitator.

Kyrgyz elders generously shared their time and knowledge with me. They expressed their concern for the loss of their craft traditions and were willing to support any research that might lead to a solution to prevent this loss. I created a series of posters illustrating these Masters and sharing quotes from them about the situation in order to be able to explain the problem in their own words.

I was asked to join this Kyrgyz family who were making a wedding carpet for one of their relatives. It was at this point where they told me to come out from behind the camera and get some hands-on experience of felt-making in order to truly understand the process. They asked me to sign my name in felt as they considered my presence (the presence of a stranger from a far away country as a sign of good fortune for the couple who were soon to be wed).

Kyrgyz family unrolling the finished felt carpet.

My research project was a follow-up to a project on preservation of biodiversity - specifically of indigenous breeds of sheep. During the Soviet era merino sheep were introduced due to the fine quality of their wool but these sheep were ill-suited to the climate and altitude and some nomadic people were giving up their traditional nomadic lifestyle to build barns to house the fragile warm-climate sheep. A recommendation by other researchers was to revive traditional felt making knowledge and skills that especially made use of the more coarse wool of these indigenous sheep which were also a more suitable food source than the "scrawny" merino sheep.

I visited several nomadic communities who still lived in felt yurts and would move with their flocks of sheep up the mountains in the springtime and down to the valleys in the fall.

Felt making is a very physical activity that traditionally involved the whole family. Altuubek Madambekov, the matriarch and manager of the family felt-making business works with her son, daughter, daughter in-law and several local ladies. These ladies have specialist skills, for example some are better at "ornament" (laying out and planning the design). Each family member knows each others' job and can fill in if someone gets busy. "Men is important, but only as helpers," Mrs Madambekov told me, "the women do most of the work." 

I initially experimented with using the photo documentation that I had started out with and presenting it in comic book style format with explanations of each of the various steps. This approach had its limitations and low literacy among some of the potential learners made this approach inaccessible for some of the target learners.

Movement proved to be an important aspect of felt-making that could not be represented accurately through still images. I experimented with different articulated paper models to see if these might become helpful teaching tools.

I saw examples of ancient Egyptian articulated sculptures or early automata and experimented with the production of one of these to depict important aspects of the felt-making process but I was not good enough at the technical aspects of this type of model making to be able to make an effective teaching resource this way.

The final prototype was based on western textile traditions of samplers (embroidery and quilting is learned and practiced by creating samplers and the samplers also serve as visual resource of motifs, colours and techniques for inspiring future works) I wondered if a similar approach could be used to pass along and practice felt making and having new learners make their own samplers gave them practical hands-on experience and the finished sampler could also serve as a visual resource. The sampler above was my own creation, I incorporated a ruler for measurement (bottom edge), a colour wheel (12), "touch squares' of different wool samples (11), various colour combinations and traditional motifs (throughout), some of the squares on my sampler depicted plants and stories relevant to traditional felt making. The final report I created included 14 sample lesson plans that could be taught using this one carpet as a teaching tool. I created it as an example to inspire the Kyrgyz master felt makers to consider something like this as an effective teaching resource and method. According to my contact, they really liked this idea and immediately improved on my concept (which I fully expected). Some samplers were created and used in a follow-up workshop with local women.