Astitva Project Report – Aug 2019

A little success. A little failure.

Success because most of the participants achieved their goals.

But what hurt was the fact that a small group did not achieve them completely.

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The project involves passing on traditional textile art skills from the older generation to the younger generation. In the earlier phase completed successfully, women learnt traditional embroidery from their elders. In this phase, women were learning to make headdresses and men were learning to make sashes from the only two surviving weavers in their community.

Although 100 percent of the participants worked on the sash and the headdresses, the women from one village completed the hat until stage 2 and did not finish the final stage.And though the men from one village did learn the simple weaves they did not master the complex zigzag weaves.

With sufficient time behind us since we started on these two micro projects, I could not use the excuse that we did not have time. It is a failure mainly on account of all involved beginning with me. Maybe if I had visited more often, this work would have remained in their active list of ‘things-to-do-this-month’. So in the future I will have to put in more effort and change the process of monitoring the progress.

Above I’ve spoken about the work left undone because that is what hit me the hardest.

And though I did not succeed in my project in totality, we did celebrate the achievements of all the individuals who did.

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Here are some photos:

A- THE HEADDRESS

1. Headdress Construction