Craft China: (Re)making ethnic heritage in China's creative economy

Lead Research Organisation: University College London
Department Name: Institute of Archaeology

Abstract

In partnership with the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology (CNME), the UCL Institute of Archaeology research team will trace the development and reception of the 'China Craft' exhibition from Nov 2018 to Oct 2020. This project focuses on how traditional ethnic-heritage crafts across China can be developed and remade in collaboration with the 'cultural creative' industries. In particular, it seeks to contribute to the wellbeing and economic sustainability of local communities, particularly in rural areas. The UCL team of researchers will function as a critical friend for the project. We regard the China Craft project as a vibrant space for remaking both ethnic-heritage, but also the practice of exhibition-making itself. The project knits together a network of individuals and institutions with diverse interests and pursuits - academic, commercial, curatorial. It therefore creates a space for encounter and communication, as well as a means of studying how the cultural creative industry, known in China as wenchuang, functions.
Since China joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) in 2004, the creative sector has been playing an increasingly significant role in the growth of China's economy. The wenchuang economy refers to a set of cultural, artistic, technological and service industries, which have been incorporated widely into the economic strategies of cities across the country, linked closely with city branding, urban planning and the development of tourism.' Following the notion that heritage is constantly 'in the making' (Harvey 2010; Svensson and Maags 2018), we see the engagement with heritage in the wenchuang industries as an ongoing process of 'creative remaking', where heritage is given new forms and meaning, resulting in reconfigurations of the values of authenticity and creativity.
By tracing the CNME's interactions with the other involved actors (V&A Shenzhen, Yunnan Minzu University), we explore how China's wenchuang industry functions on both the local and international levels and attempt a critical understanding of its engagement with heritage. This 'remaking' process ranges from the interactions between local craft people and ethnologists in Yunnan, to the manufacturing of heritage-inspired design products in the cities of Jingdezhen and Yiwu, and then to the V&A's newly-built outpost in Shenzhen, which will be collaborating with the CNME in staging craft-themed design weeks.
The primary data for this project will come from a combination of workshops and ethnographic fieldwork to be held at each of the partner sites. Workshops will be conducted over a week-long period and will focus on creating an atmosphere that fosters dialogue and collaboration.

One of the main goals of the project is to create opportunities for dialogue among local craft people, museum/heritage professionals, academics, and designers. The research would benefit the craft people in local communities by incorporating their pursuits and concerns more significantly into the exhibition-making process. Through the non-hierarchical dialogues in the workshops, we aim to deepen their involvement in the China Craft project, from providing their knowledge to co-creating the exhibition. Most importantly, it would facilitate discussions on ways to develop a sustainable relationship between local ethic communities with the creative industry.

In keeping with the dialogic spirit of the project, we will be producing a series of podcasts that trace the development of the China Craft exhibition and explores some of the key debates about heritage and the creative economy in China today. For exhibition-developers, a downloadable booklet illustrates our workshops and exhibition-making process. Finally, our WeChat network will keep the public up-to-date with all the latest news about the project and allow you to communicate with the project team.

Planned Impact

A main goal of the project is to create opportunities for dialogue among local craft people, museum/heritage professionals, academics, and designers. We hope that the synergy stemming from their meetings would inform a more comprehensive understanding of the creative remaking of ethnic heritage, and ideas of how the process may be improved.

The research would benefit the craft people in local communities by incorporating their pursuits and concerns more significantly into the exhibition making. Through the non-hierarchical dialogues in the workshops, we aim to deepen their involvement in the China Craft project, from providing their knowledge to co-creating the whole thing.. Most importantly, it would facilitate discussions on ways to develop a sustainable relationship between local ethic communities with the creative industry

The curators would benefit from experimenting co-creation workshops with craft masters and researchers to improve the quality of the exhibition. The dialogic and co-creative models of the workshop could be used in future curatorial practices.

The National Museum of Ethnology may benefit from the high profile collaboration to push for a permanent exhibition space.

This research makes original contribution to critical heritage studies, by mapping the creative industry network and critically rethinking the conventions and the limitations of the UNESCO intangible benefit framework.

In order to reach a wider public audience and build on the project's making ethos, a podcast will be created that will discuss the exhibition's development over ten episodes. The podcast will feature interviews with prominent actors in the project and discussions around key issues in relation to wenchuang in China. A Chinese and an English language version of the podcast will be created. The podcasts will have a permanent home on the UCL micro-site specially created for the project. The podcast will build on the popularity of WeChat podcasts such a Middle Earth - China's cultural industry podcast, which frequently discusses the creative economy in China and attracts large numbers of downloads. Discussions about the development of museums in China regularly feature on popular news-sites such as SixthTone. Ten podcasts will be created in total, closely-linked to the schedule of the workshops and, in turn, the exhibition-making process.

Alongside the podcasts, talks will be held about wenchuang at each of the venues to encourage dialogue and exchange with members of the public. A downloadable booklet will be available on the UCL mini-site created for the project, which will detail the workshop process and provide a potential model for other museum professionals to follow when creating their own exhibitions.
 
Title Exhibition - the Pieces we Are as part of Soft Mountains, London, 05.09.19 
Description Co-curated an exhibition about Nuosu Identity as part of London Fashion Week with Soft Mountains jewellery brand. The interpretative narrative of the exhibition was structured around three themes: tradition, making and contemporaneity. The exhibition juxtaposed historic pieces of Nuosu jewellery with contemporary pieces by Soft Mountains. 
Type Of Art Artistic/Creative Exhibition 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact The exhibition was visited by the sustainable fashion distributor Net-A-Porter who signed Soft Mountains to a distribution deal and purchased an initial thousand items from them. These items went live on the website of the 31st of January 2020, although Soft Mountains are now struggling to produce enough pieces to meet their orders due to the ongoing situation with Corvid-19, which restricts their makers (based in Liangshan in Sichuan) from making their orders. A short video documenting the making of the exhibition can be found here. 
URL https://youtu.be/69xmgpZ4P2Q
 
Description CONTEXT

Craft China has explored the impact of China's Creative Economy on the Chinese ethnic minority heritagescape. The Chinese Creative Economy is often positioned as strategically redeveloping China's economy from a manufacturing-base to a focus on the creative industries, encapsulated by the slogan: 'From Made in China to Created in China.' This economic shift itself has two distinct waves: the first beginning in 2005 with a nationwide creation of specific zones for cultural industries, or wenchuang areas. The second phase was initiated by Premier Li Keqiang from 2015 and focused on providing platforms and opportunities for a wider part of the population to be part of the creative entrepreneurial class.

Ushered in by the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chinese heritage has been conceptualised in economic terms as a series of 'booms' including the Museum Boom and the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Boom. China now has more entries in the UNESCO ICH list than any other country in the world. At the same time, it is important to note that China's relationship to ICH has a distinctly localised element. In particular, the policy of Productive Protection which began in 2011 encourages the commercialisation of ICH, on the grounds that trying to preserve traditional crafts in an unchanging state effectively fossilises them. Productive Protection encourages ICH to evolve and adapt to find a consumer niche in the commercial market under the mantra 'Sell to Save.' Although a recent policy, the idea of allowing heritage to adapt and evolve connects with far older Chinese concepts surrounding cultural heritage in regards to the fluidity of authenticity and the importance of vitality. Productive Protective seeks to 'revitalise' traditional crafts by encouraging them to seek a life in the consumer market rather than only existing in the protected environment of the museum.

Craft China explores the implications of this policy shift for some of the key actors in this process by tracing the overlapping networks of China's Creative Economy and Heritagescape with a particular focus on three key figures: Craft Inheritors, Museum Makers and Design Creatives.

CRAFT INHERITORS

The term inheritor is taken from the discourse surrounding ICH in China with lineage being a key aspect of a craft's perceived authenticity. Central to the concept of Productive Protection is the idea that crafts can provide an opportunity for economic develop in rural areas particularly in relation to Ethnic Minority communities. Indeed, this policy around ICH does allow a new generation of Craft Inheritors to make a living through making and by attracting tourists to watch demonstrations. This in turn allows these traditional crafts, skills and associated ways of life to be preserved. However, beyond this, the project found craft has many other functions for Ethnic Minorities in China. Craft, like food, is a safe discursive space to express Ethnic Minority identity and can be used by inheritors as a departure point to explore more sensitive topics such as language, environmentalism and religion. Craft can be a way of materialising a narrative - a metonym that signifies a wider story. The Productive Protection model allows crafts to develop but also provides an opportunity for Ethnic Minority heritage to avoid being frozen in the past and trascend conventional stereotypes. As such, it allows Ethnic Minority Craft Inheritors to make a new narrative of self and craft a different future.

Entrepreneurship also offers an opportunity for Ethnic Minority Makers to escape the constraints and obligations of traditional clan-based lineage structures. At the same time, commercialisation brings with it particular issues around what happens to crafts that cannot be commercialised. In Qinghai for example the demand for Thankas has meant inheritors of other crafts have themselves switched to creating Thankas meaning that other crafts are neglected and risk dying out.

MUSEUM MAKERS

The project has also helped to give a better understanding of how the Chinese Museumscape functions in relation to the Creative Economy. Primarily state-funded and driven through the delivery of state-endorsed narratives, the entrepreneurial focus of the Creative Economy affords Chinese Museums the opportunity to generate revenue for themselves and also provides opportunities for creative freedom. After a period in which the Museum Boom was largely architectural, Chinese Museums are seeking 'newness' through the narratives contained within their exhibitions. This necessitates an expansion of the available narratives they might tell. Newness might be found through the expansion of the geographical limits of what China through is the deployment the concept of tianxia, that is 'All under heaven' - the civilisational and cosmological extent of dynastic China. Equally it might be through searching back into the past to find distinct Chinese concepts of museology such as the traditional Chinese landscape garden, which they might draw upon in their creative practice. Chinese museums themselves operate within a system of guanxi in which relationships are paramount for the exchange of objects, exhibitions and ideas. For the ethnological museum this manifests itself in the concept of the contact zone. In particular, the potential of the anthropologist to bridge the gap between art, design and anthropology. The process of museum making can be a space for dialogue bringing together key actors from the creative economy including Craft Inheritors and Design Creatives. The role of the museum remains precarious in this process due to state censorship but the temporary nature of exhibitions opens up space for new perspectives to be explored and, like the garments displayed in the exhibition, tried on for size.

DESIGN CREATIVES

The Chinese designer is faced with the challenge of how to be contemporary, yet also authentically Chinese. This idea of creativity is manifested in different ways. Creativity can be expressed through the complete transformation of a traditional craft from one form to another, a paper umbrella into a paper chair, yet through the material and the stages of the making process the authenticity of the craft's inheritance can be maintained. Equally counterfeiting in the form of Shanzhai can be seen as a type of creative copying providing products that, while replicas, are simultaneously new and innovative. Central to this is the balance between lineage and vitality. Creatives working in rural environments with Ethnic Minority Craft Inheritors often speak of experiencing a shift in their practice. From initially focusing on the creation of products they describe their work as shifting to maintaining the life of the village. Finding an outlet for the products, particularly internationally, remains a challenge. Scaling up to meet demand is a problem and there are only a limited number of designers that are actively involved in a process of the creation of newness rather than the placing of new motifs onto mass-produced forms.

THE CREATIVE ECONOMY RECAST: CREATIVITY, MOVEMENT AND DIALOGUE

A key issue surrounding the Chinese Creative Economy is where does creativity come from? The Creative Economy is itself a European import yet within China we can see a search for other sources of inspiration. Muses can be located in the cosmological systems of China's imperial past in concepts like immortality or the deep lineage of traditional crafts. Equally inspiration comes from the periphery - the low-end of the urban or a return to the rhythms of the rural. In the words of one Chinese designer: 'all you need to work in China today is light, water and internet.'

At the same time, in order to connect the different actors and spaces together you need individuals who are mobile and move between and across boundaries and civilisational spaces. The three types of actors identified in this project - craft inheritor, museum maker and design creative - can sometimes be embodied in one multifaceted person.

Although the Creative Economy has been seen as a relatively new phenomenon in both China and the UK, the creative dialogue between the two countries has obviously been longstanding. The Craft China project has helped to provide historical depth to the contemporary Creative Economy by grounding it in previous historical exchanges between Britain and China such as that between the Bloomsbury Group and the Crescent Moon Group. In doing so, it has sought to influence a radical rethinking of the Creative Economy alongside its typical routinised understanding as an economic driver focusing instead on what the efficacies of creative dialogue and exchange might be. Rather than thinking of the UK and China as separate they can be seen as part of a broader Eurasian multi-civilisational identity, stretching out beyond the confines of nation states but rejecting the flattening homogeneity of global modernity.
Exploitation Route In tracing the movements of actors and agents of China's Creative Economic Ecosystem, UK creatives wishing to work in China will have a better idea of how to find collaborations and partnerships.

The model devised by the Craft China team and the Chinese National Museum of ethnology of creating exhibitions via ethnographic research, partnerships with craft designers and competitions searching for early career curators can be adopted by other museums wishing to make museum exhibitions more collaboratively.

Many of the methods and research tools used in the project such as adopting an ethnographic perspective, dialogic workshops, museum walking tours can be converted into commercially viable tools for use in exhibition planning by heritage consultancies wishing to work in China.
Sectors Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
URL https://craftchina.wordpress.com/
 
Description Echo of Liangshan have used our findings to support their continuing community work with the Nuosu community in Liangshan.
Sector Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural,Societal,Economic
 
Description Endangered Material Knowledge Programme
Amount £19,979 (GBP)
Organisation Arcadia Fund 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United Kingdom
Start 04/2023 
End 04/2024
 
Description UCL-ZJU University partnership: Devolution-Reinterpreting the Liangzhu Culture with Laozi
Amount £10,000 (GBP)
Organisation University College London 
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 05/2021 
End 12/2022
 
Title An Ethnographic Perspective to Exhibition Making 
Description From the outset, the Craft China project sought to employ an ethnographic perspective to both understand and create exhibitions. This provides an alternative to the top down curator-led approach to creating exhibitions in the UK, instead understanding heritage in the words of the Godfather of Chinese Anthropology Fei Xiaotong 'From the Soil.' It therefore offers an alternative to the project management, production-led approach that forms the dominant perspective in UK heritage consultancy in China. The benefits of this approach is that it tries to understand heritage within its local terms. Rather than operating in monumental architecture or the epic text it instead privileges civilisation with a small 'c' food, to be found in acts of hospitality and the cultural memory inherent in homes and the craft-maker's workshop. At the same time, it shifted the anthropologist into the role of production, forcing us to deal with the practicalities of completing a project to budget and deadline and having something tangible beyond the ethnographic monograph. There were three central aspects to this process. One was the incorporation of fieldtrips into the exhibition planning process that allowed the forging of relationships with both local makers and local researchers. Secondly, there was the early career curator competition developed at the Chinese National Museum of Ethnography that encouraged early career anthropologists to convert their research into exhibition proposals. Several of these were then selected to turn into actual exhibitions. This process helped to forge the gap between anthropological research and museum exhibition making of which a large gap remains in China. Thirdly designers who had previously worked with craft inheritors to make creative economy products were used in creating the exhibitions themselves. Many of the designers had relocated to remote regions and this had changed their own practice from product-design to something more akin to an NGO. They were thus able to embed their local knowledge of environment and cosmology into the design of the exhibition itself. Fourthly by working with UCL's Innovation and Enterprise programme we were able to think about how this method might be used in a commercial context. This has been trialed with Blue City's Grassroots Gala project, which seeks to combine rural New Year festival with the construction of residential developments. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The final aspect of all of this has been the embedding of a self-reflexive element into the method whereby the creation of an exhibition by anthropologists is itself the subject of ethnographic scrutiny and discussion. Out of this comes the ethnography that will provide a record of the project. 
 
Description Craft China and Rong Design Studios 
Organisation Rong Design Studio
Country China 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution Ethnographic research into the making process
Collaborator Contribution An example of the Creative Design process
Impact Production of a podcast
Start Year 2020
 
Description Craft China/China Craft partnership 
Organisation Chinese National Museum of Ethnology
Country China 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution The research team at UCL acts as a critical friend to the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology specifically surround the embedding of an anthropological point of view in the making of the China Craft exhibition, but more broadly within the overall promotion of the museum at academic conferences and industry trade shows. Although the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology has existed as a collection for over fifty years, it has yet to be allocated a permanent public exhibition space by the Chinese government. Having a partnership with an international research team based in the UK helps to boost the museum's profile and act as an advocate for it being a given a permanent form.
Collaborator Contribution The Chinese National Museum of Ethology are creating an exhibition called China Craft, which seeks to meld ethnographic research with collaborations with designers and craft people working in China's Wenchuang creative economy. Following the making of the exhibition provides us with access to various actors working within China's creative economy and in turn allows us to understand the workings of the Wenchaung ecosystem. As a result, we're able to establish a Guanxi network of designers, creatives, craft people, suppliers and distributors who can provide us with individual perspectives on what its like to work in China's creative economy.
Impact The first tangible output was the opening of the exhibition Tradition@ Present in Hangzhou, March 2019. At this event we provided a keynote lecture and organised a workshop to discuss exhibition-making in China. The findings of the workshop in terms of the need to allow more time for exhibition-making and specific techniques related to how to instil an anthropological point-of-view in an exhibition had important ramifications for the making process of Craft China. At the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology's annual conference in November we acted as judges for the early career curator's competition. We selected an ethnographer working on Tibetan Thankas for the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology. The relationship is multidisciplinary bringing together researchers in the fields of anthropology, cultural heritage studies and museum studies. It also brings together museum planners, exhibition-makers and designers.
Start Year 2019
 
Description Craft China/Soft Mountains partnership 
Organisation Soft Mountains Fashion Brand
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution Soft Mountains are a fashion accessory brand that specialise in jewellery made by the Nuosu people - an ethnic minority group from Liangshan in southwest China. The research team at UCL have provided the Soft Mountains designers with memory work and interpretative planning sessions in order to help them plan their exhibition for London Fashion Week 2019. Together they crafted an exhibition that would inform the general public about the Nuosu culture and also appeal to potential buyers working for fashion distribution companies.
Collaborator Contribution As a fashion company that works between Shanghai and London, Soft Mountains provides us as researchers with a practical understand of how Chinese creatives negotiate the different working cultures of China and the UKs creative economies. By allowing us access to their meetings with fashion distributors like Net-A-Porter they provide us with an insight into what the commercial market is looking for in terms of creative products.
Impact For London Fashion week 2019 we co-curated an exhibition with the Soft Mountains team titled the Pieces we Are. The fashion distributors Net-a-Porter visited the exhibition and as a result purchased one thousand items from Soft Mountains. They also signed up to exclusive online distribution rights providing Soft Mountains with a platform for the distribution of their jewellery in Asia, Europe and North America.
Start Year 2019
 
Description Samuel Guiyang Studio 
Organisation Samuel Guiyang
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution We provided ethnographic research to the fashion making process
Collaborator Contribution They provided creative reflection through ethnographic construction
Impact A podcast has resulted from this collaboration
Start Year 2020
 
Description UCL Craft China - BeiDa - China Craft 
Organisation Peking University
Country China 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Contributed dialogue about anthropology from a European perspective
Collaborator Contribution Contributed dialogue from a Chinese perspective
Impact Workshops between the two organisations in 2019, 2020 and 2021
Start Year 2019
 
Description Anthropology and Film workshop, Kunming University Kunming, Yunnan 08.08.19 - 10.08.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Attended a workshop with at Kunming University on anthropology and slow film. Explored the role cinematography has played in ethnographies in China and how the Craft China project might capture the exhibition-making process using film. Conducted field visits to Kunming Ethnic Minority Museum and Kunming Ethnic Minority park to explore the authorised heritage discourses surrounding the representation of ethnicity in south-west China.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Asian Heritage Management workshop, Institute of Archaeology at UCL, British Museum, March 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact As part of the Asian Heritage Management course during the strikes at UCL we conducted a teach-out examining the relationship between labour and making and how Intangible Cultural Heritage as a form of place-making is manifest in the British Museum's Asia galleries.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Association of Critical Heritage Studies 5th Biennial Conference 26th-30th Aug 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact David Francis and Zhang Lisheng organized a panel "Journey to the West (?): Crafting heritage futures in China" discussing China's direction of travel in relation to issues of heritage, future-making and globalisation. The eight papers in the panel explore heritage in China through the act of crafting, which simultaneously evokes traditional methods of making as well as its more recent association with contemporary artisanal consumption. Things being crafted by China's heritage industry include new museological praxies of curation and design; different identities in relation to rurality, ethnicity and gender; new patterns of consumption of both museum exhibitions and ICH products; and global networks of trade and influence through cross-cultural projects between China and the UK, such as V&A Design Society in Shenzhen. Collectively these papers explore whether the growth of the heritage industry is another example of China becoming more and more entangled with Western consumer value systems. The papers in this panel will be published as a special issue with the journal Cultural Trends.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://achs2020london.com/
 
Description Attended the launch of the "Echoes of Liangshan" exhibition, Beijing, 30th December 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact An exhibition curated by the Echoes of Liangshan team, founded last year by five locals from Xichang, capital city of the Da Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan, to promote cultural exchange within the region, and between the region and the outside world. This self-titled exhibition brought together 100 pieces of photography, painting, prints, sound art, and experimental video to let the audience see Liangshan from the eyes of 47 Liangshan artists.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2021/01/mountain-echoes/
 
Description Centre for Critical Heritage Studies Seminar "Craft China - exhibition making at the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology", UCL Institute of Archaeology, 1st July 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact In this virtual seminar Dr Luo Pan, the lead curator of the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology in Beijing was in dialogue with David Francis and Lisheng Zhang discussing the development of museum exhibitions in China and its relationship to the Creative Economy as part of the Craft China project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWIaG4UHuRI
 
Description Chinese National Museum of Ethnography Annual Conference, Beijing, 08.11.19-11.11.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Attended the annual conference of the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology, which focussed on the theme of Anthropology and Museum in China. Professor Mike Rowlands, an advisor to the project, acted as the discussant for the keynote lectures and provided the conference's closing paper about the relationship between ideas of justice and heritage preservation. David Francis and Lisheng Zhang delivered a paper at the conference about the sell-to-save mantra in relation to cultural heritage and ethnicity and how this approach left creatives working in China vulnerable to the demands of the markets in relation to the authenticity of their techniques.
Workshop with Nam, Dai ethnic minority potter about the relationship between anthropology and creative making in relationship to performances of Tibetan identity through dance and song.
Acted as judges in the Anthropological Exhibition Curation competition, which solicited responses from early-career anthropologists to transform their research into finished exhibitions. The selected exhibitions will have the opportunity to be made into finished displays as part of the China Craft exhibition.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Craft Revitalisation Forum, Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum, 24.09.19 - 30.09.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Attended the start-up of the Craft Revitalisation Forum at the Arts and Crafts Museum in Hangzhou as part of the team of museum-makers from the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology. The Craft Revitalisation Forum is a government backed initiative that seeks to bring together academics, museums, craft makers and representatives of industry to explore how traditional crafts can play a role in China's Creative Economy. Operating under the mantra of Sell-to-Save, the forum sought to explore case studies whereby traditional crafts have evolved to find a niche in the creative economy ecosystem. In particular, it looked at how online platforms had enabled makers in remote rural locations to reach a wider audience. The second half of the conference explored the role crafts and the wenchuang economy could play in creating revenue for contemporary museums. We presented a paper exploring how the remaking of ethnic minority crafts provides a means for makers from an ethnic minority background to remake their own identities and voice contemporary concerns related to environmentalism and the inheritance of culture.

Workshop with Zhang Lei of the Rong Design Library exploring the concept of a library of materials and the nature of creativity and Chineseness in relation to deconstruction and reconstruction. Workshop at the Design Museum at Hangzhou Arts and Design University exploring the creation of a Euoramerican design narrative and the untold story behind Chinese design.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Crafting museum exhibitions in China's heritage boom, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Nottingham University (Nov 2018) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Conducted a workshop on crafting museum exhibitions and the Chinese heritage boom at Nottingham University's school of architecture at the British Museum
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Cultural Memory Week, Institute of Archaeology at UCL, University College London, February 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact As part of the Cultural Memory Week at the Institute of Archaeology we hosted a seminar about Cultural Memory, the Cultural Revolution and forgetting and remembering in relation to traditional Chinese crafts. The seminar explored how the practice of making and using craft objects can be seen as a form of memory work and the role materiality plays in giving this memory a tangible form.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Dai pottery making-workshops, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan 11.08.19 - 16.08.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Visits to five different Dai pottery studios in Xishuangbanna and two monasteries to record how the traditional method of Dai pottery making in Yunnan and how it has adapted and evolved in China's Creative Economy. Workshop with Nam, a Dai potter working in a contemporary style, to explore how ceramics can be a vehicle for the Dai cultural revival and environmental activism in relation to the damming of Mekong River and conservation of the region's biodiversity.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Dialogic walking tour with Soft Mountains at the British Museum (Jan 2019) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Dialogic walking tour of the Soft Mountains collections at the British Museum exploring how contemporary Chinese design is represented at the British Museum and narratives of Asian and European civilisations manifest themselves in museum display.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Establishment of the Chinese heritage reading group, London, 23.04.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Created a reading group containing researchers from the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, the Institute of Education at UCL, Kings College London, Leicester University and practitioners from British Museum, the V&A and the Science Museum to meet and discuss the role of cultural heritage in China. The group meet monthly and out of our readings we are producing a session on Chinese heritage that has been accepted for the Association of Critical Heritage Studies Conference to be held in London in August 2020.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018,2019
 
Description Exhibition visit and workshop Design society, Shenzhen 05.11.19-07.11.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Visit to Rong design exhibition held at V&A Shenzhen to explore how the Rong method of deconstructing traditional Chinese crafts and reconstructing them as contemporary design translates into exhibition making. Workshop with education department at V&A Shenzhen at Design Society exploring the relationship between Chinese and UK museumscapes and the nature of making as part of contemporary Chinese education. The workshop also explored the nature of heritage in a city associated with the explosion of newness brought about by the Open and Reform period and how the locality of Shenzhen could be preserved in Shenzhen, through features such as Shangzhai(literally mountain cottage but often translated as copy-cat culture).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description HTW Berlin - Dialogic tour and workshop about Decolonisation in the British Museum, January 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact A dialogic tour of the British Museum's Asia galleries exploring the British Museum's representation of modern Chinese history including depictions of the opium wars and contemporary craft in Jingdezhen.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Materiality, Heritage and Civilisation lecture series, Institute of Cultural Heritage, Quanzhou Normal University, 7th November 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact As part of the "Materiality Heritage and Civilisation" lecture series at Quanzhou Normal University, Mike Rowlands gave a talk on Quanzhou craft making, with Lisheng Zhang and Luo Pan as discussants.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Museum Exhibition Design: Histories and Futures Conference, Brighton University, 21st Sept 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Presentation "Craft and Creativity: (Re)making exhibition design in China's Museum Boom" delivered by David Francis and Zhang Lisheng at the Museum Exhibition Design conference, discussing how the design language of the Creative Economy (known in China as Wenchuang) has proven to be an important source of inspiration for Chinese exhibitions in the first decade after China's museum boom.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://musex-design.org/full-programme/
 
Description Panel discussion and exhibition opening Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum 27.03.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Attended and observed the opening of the exhibition Tradition@Present at the Arts and Crafts Museum in Hangzhou. The exhibition was created in collaboration between the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology and the Arts and Crafts Museum in Hangzhou and explored the relationship between traditional ethnic clothing, cosmological world views and contemporary fashion. Participated in the Round Table discussion on the exhibition Tradition@Present about exhibition making in China with museum directors, exhibition designers and museum studies academic. Presented a 90-minute talk about Tradition@Present to the museum staff, academics and general public to explore museum-making in contemporary China and contemporary Egypt with reference to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Took part in a public discussion about the relationship between modernity as a Euroamerican import creating a rupture in China between its past and present according to paradigm of the 'Melancholy East'
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Pitch for Launch programme as part of UCL Hatchery 02.07.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact In order to practically test how the academic research generated by the Craft China project might be used for sustainable development and have a meaningful impact in the Creative Economy we enrolled in the UCL Innovation and Enterprise programme. This programme seeks to understand how academic research can be coupled with entrepreneurial skills to create a business. In collaboration with the Soft Mountains team, we pitched how an anthropological perspective could inform heritage management in China with a view to creating sustainable development opportunities for people living in rural areas. The audience included alumni members of UCL Innovation and Enterprise as well as representatives of business and industry. Our idea finished in the top five for the Launch programme and we were awarded a free session of legal advice and a free session of financial advice, as well as being invited to join the Launch programme, which seeks to transform your idea into an actual business.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Presentation for the Mengyang Mountain Group, Beijing, 1st November 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Zhang Lisheng and Luo Pan in dialogue discussing the Craft China project at a meeting of the Mengyang Mountain Group, a Beijing-based anthropology group led by Prof Wang Mingming from Peking University
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description SAWA Goethe Institute Summer School for Early Career Museum professionals from Germany and the Mena region, 18.09.19-23.09.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presented a seminar on the relationship between remaking of contemporary crafts and the remaking of museum exhibitions in China. Explored the parallels and differences between the respective museumscapes of China, Germany and the Mena region.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.goethe.de/ins/ae/en/kul/sup/sawa-museum-academy.html
 
Description Samuel Guiyang - Spring collection launch, Seven Sisters, London, January 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Seminar with Samuel Guiyang and attendees of the launch of his Spring collection and accompanying photobook documenting life in Shanghai with a 1970s Japanese photobook aesthetic. Topics discussed included the role Central St Martins plays in his creative process and the influence of narratives of desire and gender fluidity on his work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Samuel Guiyang, Launch of Autumn Fashion Collection, Seven Sisters, London 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact As part of the launch of London-based Cantonese fashion designer Samuel Guiyang's autumn collection we held a workshop exploring what it means to be a Chinese creative working overseas and how the industrial mass production of rubber in the Cantonese region might itself be considered a craft.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Seminar on anthropological point of view, Sociology and Anthropology Department, Nanjing University 03.04.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Ran a seminar on the anthropological point-of-view and the role of ethnographic collections making comparisons between the UK and China. Discussed the word Minzu and its double-meaning of both ethnicity but also nation and how this casts the relationship between the 56 'official' ethnicities of China in a different light. How might they be related to the idea of nation in terms of the make-up of the British Isles for example?
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Seminar, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Nottingham University, 21 November 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Conducted a seminar at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Nottingham University about the architecture of the Chinese museum boom and how a craft ethos might connect contemporary building practice to the underlying cosmology of China's traditional building practices.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Synergy meeting with the BlueCity Team, Hangzhou, 13th December 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A synergy meeting with BlueCity, a Hangzhou real estate firm that the Craft China team has been working with, as consultants, on promoting the 'grassroots gala' in rural Zhejiang. The 'grassroots gala' is an annual Spring Festival celebration event with folk art performance organized by rural communities.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Understanding Authenticity in China's Cultural Heritage seminar series, Oxford University, 21st October 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact David Francis and Lisheng Zhang gave a talk titled "Reevaluating authenticity: Creativity in contemporary craft making in China" for the Understanding Authenticity in China's Cultural Heritage seminar series led by Chris Foster and Anke Hein. More information:
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuOeqrTybHk
 
Description Visit to the Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum, Hangzhou, 12th December 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Visit to the "Shapes of Immortality: Museum@Contemporary Art" exhibition, a collaboration between the Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum and the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts, curated by Xu Xiaoxiao. By juxtaposing museum collection with contemporary artwork, this exhibition discusses the human pursuit of immortality and eternity.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://app.bowu66.com/museum-cms/cp/education
 
Description Visit to the Rong Design Library, Qingshan Village, Hangzhou, 15th December 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A follow-up visit to Rong Design Library and meeting with director of the Library, Wang Xinze, about future collaborations.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://www.handmadeinhangzhou.com/rong.php?&lang=en
 
Description Workshop and walking tour of creative economy hubs in Shanghai with Soft Mountains team 04.04.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact Workshop with Ziwei Longhong, founder of the Chinese ethnic-minority Jewellery brand Soft Mountains and one of our Creative partners on the project to discuss the nature of the creative economy in China and its relationship to Nuosu (grouped within the Yi category of ethnicity) identity. A tour of some of the key wenchuang creative economy sites in Shanghai including K11 art mall and klee klee - a fashion boutique partnered with the Dali project who work with Dong ethnicity crafts people to make contemporary textiles.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Workshop with Rong Design Library, Hangzhou 13.11.19 - 16.11.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Seminar with Rong Design Library exploring how an ethnographic point-of-view can be used to understand the impact of establishing a design studio in rural Qingshan Village, some 45 kilometres from Hangzhou, on the lives of the residents of the village. The workshop also explored the Rong Design Library's international placement programme and the relationship between the artistic side of the Library and the commercial side of the Company.
Workshop with Pascale Pintx a Shanghai-based UK designer exploring opportunities for UK creatives in Shanghai's fashion and design sectors.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Workshop with V&A curators and researchers (23.04.20) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Visit to Christian Dior exhibition and workshop to discuss the franchising of the Victoria and Albert at Design Society in Shenzhen and the research into white porcelain in Quanzhou China.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Workshops anthropology and architecture, Nanjing University, 16.11.19 - 18.11.19 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Workshop with Chen Tonghe, former designer of Nanjing University Museum and judge on China's national exhibition awards panel, exploring how traditional Chinese painting feeds into Chinese exhibition-making.
Attended the Nanjing University Dialogues between Anthropology and Architecture conference. Mike Rowlands provided the keynote for the conference exploring the relationship between water, religion and the remaking of Quanzhou as part of a UNESCO World Heritage bid. David Francis produced a paper on the remaking of workshop, studio and exhibition spaces by Chinese creative designers.
Workshop with Craft China project participants exploring narratives of betrayal in Jianghu (literally translated as rivers and lakes) a genre of Chinese underground martial arts fiction and its applicability as a metaphor for collaborative cross-cultural project work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019