The Voices of the Cordillera- Digitising an Oral Tradition.

Kelly, Rachel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4385-0131 (2019) The Voices of the Cordillera- Digitising an Oral Tradition. In: Design for Change Symposium, 11 December 2019 - 12 December 2019, Design Museum, London.

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Abstract

Under the remit of the UN Global Challenges Sustainable Goal 4, it must be understood that the capital value of knowledge preservation needs to be elevated by the economic benefits of formal education and the ongoing and often lifelong socio-economic impact it creates. The development and support of ethnolinguistic weaving practice may enable real-world benefits for Philippine society, culture, the environment and the economy; it may address global challenges of diminishing craft skill bases and knowledge and it may encourage an education ecosystem which challenges dominant craft and design education structures. This paper is a reflection on a 2019 British Council & Crafts Council / Crafting Futures grant project which enabled a collaboration between the Philippines based CordiTex project and Manchester School of Art to support the future digitization of indigenous weaving tradition within the Cordillera region of the Northern Philippines. The paper asks if the weaving tradition of the Cordillera is to transform and change from the problems it faces, what impacts will the shift from of an oral to a digital tradition create?