The Art of Empowerment
Pure Felt Jordan will soon employ 18 fantastic women as wool spinners, carders and dyers for our various Jordan CSR felt art commissions. I am grateful for the support of and partnership with the amazing Princess Taghrid Institute in Amman without whom Pure Felt Jordan and the social impact through our empowering felt art projects in Jordan and the Middle East would not be possible. Thank you Princess Taghrid and your wonderful team!
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”
~Nelson Henderson.
Listen to this latest music video by the singer/songwriter team of Nimo Patel and Daniel Nahmod and filmmaker Ellie Walton which captures the spirit of doing our part. Planting seeds, that is what we at Pure Felt are trying to do too in our own very way. And we love it!
Do you know the principle of Kintsugi? This is a Japanese art form where broken pieces of bone china are glued with a mix of gold and epoxy and where the break line remains visible. In this manner the original plate or cup will become even more beautiful: imperfections turn into a sign of beauty and strength.
A couple of months ago French artist Helene Guggenheim met a woman. When the woman changed her clothes Guggenheim noticed a huge scar where once the woman`s left breast had been. Guggenheim was touched by the vulnerability of the scar and linked this to the beautiful message behind the philosophy of Kintsugi.
This was the start of the project ‘Mes cicatrices, Je suis d’elles, entièrement tissé‘ (My scars, of them I am fully woven). In a series of photographs and video performance the artist subtly covers the scars of models in leaf gold. Like the broken pottery the scars turn into a sign of power and life instead of a painful memory.
Scars are part of the tapestry of life. They can be powerful reminders of how strong people are – revealing how they have come through life altering events like cancer. However they happened, they all have a story to tell and mark a passage of healing.
Guggenheim: “Every scar tells a story in which we are a hero. It marks a wound that will never disappear.
Albeit it is also the living proof of healing and a symbol that we have conquered our tragedies. My project focuses on the combination of delicacy and power that all human beings have in common.” To be applied maybe in our discovering hands art installation? Who knows ….
Jointly with about 20 students and 2 teachers of the International School of Zug Pure Felt is working on 12 hand-felted felt banners of 3 m2 each which will depict the confronting message of breast cancer, survival and hope.
The purpose of the art installation and its traveling exhibition is to raise awareness for early breast cancer detection by trained blind women through the proven discovering hands method (www.discovering-hands.de) and to raise funds for a feasibility study in Switzerland to bring this discovering hands concept to Switzerland (and beyond).
We want to accomplish this through a travelling exhibition of our impactful yet graceful felt art installation designed and created for this purpose, which exhibition will be accessible for both the seeing and the visually impaired (the art work may be touched and texts will also be in braille).
View our discovering-hands project.
PURE FELT is on a mission to empower vulnerable women and challenged unemployed youth who mainly live in poverty stricken regions of the world. We are committed to impact their lives through our large-scale felt art commissions.
Thus, “empowerment” is one of PURE FELT`s key values and key words. But what does empowerment actually mean in general? And what does empowerment and The Art of Empowerment mean to us and how we are rolling out our mission?
Empowerment refers to policies and measures designed to increase the degree of autonomy and self-determination in the lives of people and in communities in order to (re-)enable them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting (again) on their own authority. Empowerment refers both to the process of self-empowerment and to professional support of people, which enables them to overcome their sense of powerlessness and lack of influence, and to recognise and eventually use their resources and chances.
Empowerment also includes encouraging, and developing the skills for, self-sufficiency, with a focus on eliminating the future need for charity or welfare in the individuals of the group. This process can be difficult to start and to implement effectively. With our felt art installation commissions and traineeships we are focusing on economic development, and the empowerment approach which focuses on mobilizing the self-help efforts of the poor, rather than providing them with social welfare, if available at all.
The PURE FELT felt art projects empower women and unemployed youth with the resources to rise above poverty. Empowered women and youth transform their families, communities, and the world. We provide access to temporary employment programs, to hard and soft skills transfer, internships and improve youth employability. There are three components to our approach:
Enjoy!
Dianne and the Pure Felt team