Mission

Design Foundation for Women and Crafts

Facing urgent challenges of the 21^st Century and the growing necessity to preserve, protect and promote a worldwide legacy of unique, female-led artisanal production, the Design Foundation for Women and Crafts is rooted in a mission to contribute, through the introduction of design-based strategies, to the assertion and enhancement of these female clusters, which are key players of great social impact and dedicated to environmentally sustainable crafts.

DFFWAC Manifesto

FIVE PILLARS

The Design Foundation for Women and Crafts is upheld by five pillars that form the core of its framework.

Protect and Preserve

Protect, preserve and stimulate the global community of female artisans, safeguarding their unique practices and know-how for future generations and preventing their extinction.

Understand and Inform

To produce knowledge and share information about the global community of female artisans, creating a broader understanding and awareness of contemporary women-driven crafts.

Update Through Design

Contribute towards the reinforcement, acknowledgement, economic sustainability and innovation of these crafts through the introduction of design-based strategies and processes.

Integrate

Promote intercultural relationships between different communities of female artisans around the world, fostering the social, cultural and economic integration of migrant communities through the practice of women-made crafts.

Educate

Educate and equip both female and male artisans, encompassing all ages and nationalities, to continue and solidify the sustainable production of age-old and contemporary crafts through the transmission of knowledge, methodologies and techniques.

Plan of Action

The Design Foundation for Women and Crafts fulfills its mission through projects and actions that apply design strategies and tools to the universe of crafts.

Creating original site-specific design projects to maintain and update artisanal practices among female clusters, providing them with visibility and economic sustainability.

Producing knowledge and information concerning the relationship between the universe of women-made artisanal crafts and social, cultural and environmental sustainability, mapping its worldwide presence and creating an online database.

Probing intercultural relationships between different existing communities of female artisans and developing new interactions that take into account contemporary migratory patterns.

Implementing educational initiatives to guarantee the transmission of knowledge and know-how to new generations of both female and male artisans.

Bringing together urban and rural contexts, transporting the theme of crafts into the reality of large cities and driving new generations and markets towards rural contexts.

Introducing new materials and technologies, including digital ones, into the universe of female-driven crafts, allowing for the development of new types of craft, based on 21^st Century realities.

Projects

The Design Foundation for Women and Crafts begins its mission with the implementation of a set of founding projects and programmes.

By materializing these initiatives, it lays the foundation of its intervention alongside national and international artisan communities, as well as society as a whole, initiating a process of profound action into the context of female-oriented craft practices.

Mapping Inland Oceans No Borders Teach Me Website & App Design, Women and Crafts Conference Give Me Your Hand International Presentations Commissions Urgent Tools

Updated information about our activities and partners.

July, 2020

DFFWAC Manifesto:
A community for communities

The Design Foundation for Women and Crafts is creating a new community, bringing together a group of...Read More

June, 2020

Redondo

Interview w/ Maria José Garcia da Silva — Alentejo Furniture Painter

Redondo is a small but important town in central Alentejo, where the art of wood furniture painting... Read More

April, 2020

Pico