Tribal Design Forum Launches Month-Long Online Fest ‘TribalFutures ‘
Kohima : The Tribal Design Forum has kicked off its month-long online festival, ‘Tribal Future’, starting today, August 1st, and will continue till August 31st. The event will be live-streamed on the forum’s official Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube channels.
On the inaugural day, Kevisedenuo Margaret Zinyu, a textile designer and entrepreneur from Kohima, Nagaland, participated. She delivered a 30-minute online presentation showcasing her work with women artisans from various communities in Nagaland.
Through her presentation, Zinyu explained how through her label Woven thread she combined traditional craftsmanship with modern design to create a textile product that has proven quite popular in the International market. She highlighted the importance of utilizing the traditional knowledge and skills of artisans and demonstrated how these unique community talents were preserved in her designs. She also focused on the socio-economic impact of her work, explaining how she creates an enabling environment for women artisans, empowering them through sustainable employment and skill development.
Following the presentation, a question-and-answer session allowed the live audience to interact with Zinyu. This provided insights into how creative imagination and design thinking can be used to create products that not only preserve traditional knowledge and skills but also compete with other products in the modern market. Margaret Zinyu, belonging to the Angami Naga community, was awarded a gold medal by the Nagaland Governor last year for her outstanding contributions to the field of art.
This ‘TribalFutures’ series, spanning the next 29 days, brings together creative professionals and designers from across the country and the world. It celebrates their remarkable contributions and works based on creative imagination.
This is India’s first-of-its-kind event, conceived and executed by creative professionals and designers from various tribal communities across the country. The forum believes that if India’s tribal youth cannot imagine their future, they cannot build it. Therefore, the Tribal Design Forum is celebrating World Indigenous Day not as a one-day celebration of dancel but as a 30-day series of intellectual and creative discussions to present a new face of the contemporary creative tribal community to the world and inspire the youth. Today’s session focused on how designers can play a crucial role in the cultural, social, and economic development of tribal communities. Tomorrow, Alyen Phoning, from the Lepcha community of West Bengal, will participate to showcase and discuss her work on Art.. For complete details about the series, visit www.tribaldesignforum.com
