BACKGROUND
Lakiya Negev Bedouin weaving was established in 1991 as an income generating project for Palestinian Bedouin women living in villages and homesteads in LAKIYA, the Negev desert. The social enterprise provides women with the opportunity to develop the traditional skills of spinning and weaving, and to acquire new roles as business managers. As a mixed group of designers from Royal College of Art and Shenkar University, we worked with the Bedouin women to see how design could help develop their activities, to secure their future prosperity.
BRIEF
"Produce design solutions that would provide a long term socio-economic renewal for the Bedouin weavers and their community."
Deliverable #1
VALUE CREATION
Making one LAKIYA rug is very labor intensive and takes anywhere from a few days to several weeks of weaving to complete. We realised that showing how much work really goes into weaving a LAKIYA rug is important for justifying its price, so we proposed to label the rugs with basic information and that every rug should also be sold with a certificate of authenticity.
Deliverable #2
ONLINE PRESENCE
ONLINE PRESENCE
Our proposal is currently being developed into the final version of LAKIYA's new website. Visit the draft website here
Deliverable #3
EU FUNDING APPLICATION
EU FUNDING APPLICATION
To speed up the socio-economic growth in the bedouin community, we found interested partners and wrote a draft EU funding proposal, which is currently being developed further by our partners.
The proposal is focused around re-introducing natural dyes in the weaving process. Bedouins stopped using natural dyes in the 70’s and started buying synthetic dyes from the United Kingdom. Re-introducing natural dyes would create a sustainable system involving more people in a closed loop process. The plants that produce the dyes will be grown locally and in this process different competences will be required, generating a significant number of new job opportunities.
This proposal aims to:
- Create new job opportunities based on gender equality in order to benefit the whole community of Lakiya
- Promote Lakiya and the Negev for the know-how in weaving
- Add value to the woven product as it will be created according to the Bedouin heritage by using natural dyes
- Encourage Israeli-Arab cooperation across Israel
- Add value to the woven product as it will be created according to the Bedouin heritage by using natural dyes
- Encourage Israeli-Arab cooperation across Israel
