Abstract
The idea of value chains within textile production, informs and directs much textile design research. This discourse has developed to respond to a growing desire to modify the textile value chain towards a more circular model (Alves, 2022). Although necessary to advance circularity, focusing entirely on value chains, precludes any vision of developing what we term a benefit chain. Focusing on a benefit chain, rather than a value chain could lead to new research frameworks in textiles research that move us towards addressing systemic injustices caused by capitalism, imperialism, and colonization, to which dominant modes of design continue to contribute (Mareis and Paim 2021, Fletcher and Tham 2019). This paper proposes that focusing on who benefits from textile design research, particularly research that is highly collaborative and transdisciplinary, will lead to fairer and more equitable outcomes contributing to decolonisation and (re)indigenisation. Furthermore, mapping the benefits of research forces researchers to acknowledge their position in collaborative situations and to address the imbalances resulting from working with communities outside of research institutions. In this paper transdisciplinary projects involving collaboration with researchers inside and outside of research institutions will be examined in the context of textile design research in Aotearoa. We argue that for communities - particularly indigenous communities - to benefit from collaborative and transdisciplinary textile design research, their specific values need to be considered from the outset of a project. Within an Aotearoa context, indigenous knowledge systems provide the values that form a lens that needs to be sharpened for each specific context. This avoids homogenising communities of people (or cultural groupings). As such the approach needs to be place based if it is to benefit the kinship group, region, village, town, that the community is rooted in.
Keywords
benefit mapping; decolonizing design; indigenous plant fibres; indigenous plant based dyes
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/TI-2023/120
Citation
Kilford, A., Withers, S., Ruka, T.,and Kane, F.(2023) Mapping the benefits of collaborative textile research in Aotearoa New Zealand, in Tincuta Heinzel, Delia Dumitrescu, Oscar Tomico, Sara Robertson (eds.), Proceedings of Textile Intersections Conference 2023, 20 - 23 September, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/TI-2023/120
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Critical textiles
Included in
Mapping the benefits of collaborative textile research in Aotearoa New Zealand
The idea of value chains within textile production, informs and directs much textile design research. This discourse has developed to respond to a growing desire to modify the textile value chain towards a more circular model (Alves, 2022). Although necessary to advance circularity, focusing entirely on value chains, precludes any vision of developing what we term a benefit chain. Focusing on a benefit chain, rather than a value chain could lead to new research frameworks in textiles research that move us towards addressing systemic injustices caused by capitalism, imperialism, and colonization, to which dominant modes of design continue to contribute (Mareis and Paim 2021, Fletcher and Tham 2019). This paper proposes that focusing on who benefits from textile design research, particularly research that is highly collaborative and transdisciplinary, will lead to fairer and more equitable outcomes contributing to decolonisation and (re)indigenisation. Furthermore, mapping the benefits of research forces researchers to acknowledge their position in collaborative situations and to address the imbalances resulting from working with communities outside of research institutions. In this paper transdisciplinary projects involving collaboration with researchers inside and outside of research institutions will be examined in the context of textile design research in Aotearoa. We argue that for communities - particularly indigenous communities - to benefit from collaborative and transdisciplinary textile design research, their specific values need to be considered from the outset of a project. Within an Aotearoa context, indigenous knowledge systems provide the values that form a lens that needs to be sharpened for each specific context. This avoids homogenising communities of people (or cultural groupings). As such the approach needs to be place based if it is to benefit the kinship group, region, village, town, that the community is rooted in.