An education project with students from Lisbon
We teamed up with the textile department at António Arroio Art & Design School in Lisbon for an inspiring four-month collaboration with their final year students. We started by sharing our work methodology as designers in the context of crafts, followed by a hands-on research assignment. Along the process we gave several feedback sessions and finished with a final presentation by the end of the semester.
The students first encounters with traditional crafts kicked off with a deeper look into vegetable fibres and traditional basketry. Then they researched traditional weaving patterns, materials and techniques from Portugal. Working in groups, they quickly started to play around with techniques and materials on different looms and in the printing workshop.
As a result they turned woven fibres into printing patterns, tested new weaving techniques with threads and fibres on the loom and created patterns with the traditional “puxado” technique. Besides, we challenged them to test natural dyeing recipes on tricky vegetable fibres such as palm or bulrush.
Thanks to an enthusiastic group of students and three dedicated teachers, this collaboration resulted in inspirational samples and product research, which were shown at their final year's exhibition at the Luís de Camões Library in Lisbon.
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