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The British Council and Anou are launching an open call seeking 3 UK-based design and craft practitioners for the second round of the Common Thread residencies. The residencies will take place over a period of 3 weeks, when the residents will live in the High Atlas Mountains with artisans who are part of the Moroccan e-commerce artisan-led platform Anou. Residents and artisans will lead workshops and share their practices with each other in this exciting opportunity.
This residency is for UK-based practitioners. Applicants from design and craft backgrounds are preferred, though applications from other practitioners will be considered. Residents will be given the opportunity to learn from artisans working across weaving, leather, jewellery, woodwork, ceramics and metalwork.
The 2015 Residencies
This year’s residencies will run from approximately 10 – 31 August.
The main objective of the Common Thread residencies is to bring together a wide range of creatives based in the UK and Morocco to share and exchange creative processes as well as address key questions the artisan community in Morocco have developed as a result of last year’s Common Thread programme. This experience aims to:
- Create a meaningful meeting of peers from the UK and Morocco to exchange skills, knowledge and ideas and to explore the relationship between craft and contemporary design in these two countries;
- Enable participants from different backgrounds to experience first-hand each other’s industries and approaches in a way they might not otherwise have been able to;
- Expose participants to different approaches to the creative process;
- Enable participants to share aspects of their culture and how it influences their work;
- Address questions that have arisen within the Anou community as a result of last year’s Common Thread programme, such as what constitutes a design, how can a design be protected and what role does cultural heritage and craft play in contemporary design;
- Provide designers with a hands-on opportunity to learn an artisan craft technique.
Further details on the residencies and how to apply can be found on the open call document here.
The closing date for submissions is Monday 6 July 2015.