Society and culture

Preserving cultural histories through craft and community

Kaarigar connects racialized women with knowledge holders to support the chain of transmission for cultural creative practices.

Ebunoluwa Akinbo painting a carved blocked to do block printing
Estimated Read Time:
2 minutes
Kaarigar community member explores South Asian Block Printing through painting a carved block to later imprint the design to upcycle a tote bag.
Photo credit: Ebunoluwa Akinbo.
Kaarigar community member explores South Asian Block Printing through painting a carved block to later imprint the design to upcycle a tote bag.
Photo credit: Ebunoluwa Akinbo.
Estimated Read Time:
2 minutes

Cultural crafts, while rooted in histories, are not static, especially those done by women. Practices change as traditions change and as crafts are passed from mother to daughter. This transmission of knowledge, while essential to preserving cultural creative practices is something that is not always available to people.

The Kaarigar community seeks to address this need by creating opportunities for the exchange of cultural knowledge and women’s generational knowledge through connecting racialized women at the University of Manitoba with knowledge holders for a variety of cultural crafting workshops.

Members of the Kaarigar community, sisters Alayna and Ifra Shami say their love of crafting comes from their mother, and being able to watch her craft as they grew up. “We are privileged to have that connection to our culture and the crafts we learned growing up,” says Ifra, “but we know not everyone has that. Maybe they moved away from family or a community of women who could teach them, but we knew that it was important to run these events so people could come and share.”

a handbuilding technique is used to make a Jebena (Ethiopian coffee pot)
Hadeel Ismael uses a handbuilding technique to make a Jebena which is an Ethiopian coffee pot. Photo Credit: Alayna Shami

“A lot of these cultural crafts you can’t do without community; it is often done with multiple people and takes many hands to put things together” says Alayna. This element of community can be seen as people naturally step in to support setting up and taking down the event, sharing supplies, and offer each other help when the facilitator is unavailable. Ifra added that Kaarigar is unique in the sense that it brings together people from many different cultural backgrounds into one community to learn about each other’s cultural crafts.

One of the main goals for this community is the preservation of cultural crafting practices, but members also wanted to highlight how their work challenges capitalistic ideas of productivity and worth through encouraging participants to allow themselves to rest. 

Coffee being brewed and served at the Ethiopian Clay Kaarig gathering
Workshop facilitator Netsanet Shawl leads a coffee ceremony and shares the cultural significance of the tradition. Photo credit: Alayna Shami
Craft is an anti-capitalist practice in a way. Capitalism doesn’t allow you to rest because your worth is tied to your productivity, so it is inherently anti-capitalist to create for fun and joy.

Alayna Shami

Kaarigar recognizes that craft as a source of rest is not the reality for all women, and that for many women the craft they are practicing is their livelihood, but their community aims to reclaim how they practice their cultural crafts by creating for preservation of joy.

Through participation in the Community Leadership Development Program, Kaarigar community leaders received training and funding for a series of more than ten cultural craft workshops. Specific crafts the community have engaged with so far are Ethiopian clay pot making, South Asian block printing, and Palestinian Tatreez, with more upcoming workshops and new ideas being brought up from within the community all the time. 

To learn more about Kaarigar’s upcoming events or how to become an active member in this community check out their Instragram @kaarigarcreate.

This story is part of a series highlighting the community-building work of student leaders in the Community Leadership Development Program. For information of the Community Leadership Development Program, reach out to madison.reed@umanitoba.ca.

Creating space for everyone to thrive is more than a goal—it’s who we are. Fostering a vibrant community is among the commitments you’ll find in MomentUM: Leading change together, the University of Manitoba’s 2024–2029 strategic plan.