A Vision For Worldwide Women’s Craft
by Lucinda Rose
It is simultaneously a true joy to teach the young women and mothers this creative skill – from where, I don’t know, it has come. We know they’re made by the African women in Kenya, but did it start there? It seems that craft these days is becoming more widespread, universal, to the point where the lines have been blurred between whose craft is whose, between the paradigms of cultural values inhibiting a particular creative method, between the people themselves who create the craft/art. It is one and the same. This is great in enhancing the sense of understanding and potential collaboration between cultures; this is challenging in distinguishing where individual cultures can maintain their sense of identity, security and dependence of economic returns.
Nevertheless, it is time to make these beads, to help these women enhance their creative skills (as well as our own here), and help them sustainably develop through craft and art. This is the magnificent thing – that people can, and should, be able to do what they love, something big, for themselves and society. You see, in being born we are caught in a net of what we believe to be true based on the environment around us and what was before. Our choice can be to be released from our net – if we need or want to – in order to experience the height of creativity, abundance and prosperity we can and really deserve! It begins with a choice, and from there a willingness to learn and so on. Do these women really want to create craft? I you, them, may never know, however through our creative minds, we can transform our cultural paradigms into experiences of brilliance that are truly us, into designs and opportunities and artifacts that were always meant to happen. And we can do it now.
They are enthusiastic and so naturally creative they are making them better than all of us shortly. I feel I have made lasting friendships here that will be developed next time I come back and collaborate with them. Right now I do not want to be doing anything else – I am living my absolute dream, for the feeling and awareness that I am makes me tearful in gratitude. I am a different person here… a pure human being stripped down to my core and Soul.
To be continued…
