ABSTRACT
The Rhizome Framework proposes that traditional craft evolve along several potentially viable directions through craft-design collaboration. Designers conducted a space-making craft workshop in India to trial the Rhizome Framework and Approach. The workshop centered on craft-design collaboration between Indian designers and the Kotwalia, a traditional Indian bamboo-working tribe. The number of Kotwalia who continue to craft agrarian bamboo products is dwindling, because the demand for their baskets has all but vanished due of the influx of industrially produced substitutes. An important consideration of both the Rhizome Approach and the workshop design was to take the designers through three independent, but closely interconnected, modes of thinking: connective or systems thinking, critical thinking or the ability to critique existing and established mental models, and personal thinking, or self-awareness. The workshop participants were provided with a design brief which clearly indicated expectations vis-a-vis each dimension of sustainability.
