Stories of Making | Norway - New Zealand indigenous crafts collaboration

Stories of Making: Across the Ocean, Over the Mountain is a collaborative programme on indigenous knowledge and craft practice with an online programme in November 2020, linking makers and curators in Norway and New Zealand.

Stories of Making: Across the Ocean, over the Mountain explores how lived cultural practices are unique to place and people yet offer common ground to come together. Centering on projects from Sápmi and Aotearoa, the seminar will consider how storytelling, making practices, and aural traditions strengthen cultural perspectives and how the exchange of ideas and global strategies can support new ways of valuing Indigenous knowledge. The program will include examples of how research has been conducted and how institutions engage and disseminate Indigenous perspectives, with a special focus on duodji and making practices from Sápmi, Aotearoa and the Moana Oceania.

Norwegian Crafts has been redefining our understanding of (contemporary) craft and the way in which our organisation honours Indigenous making practices and underrepresented voices in the craft field for the past three years. Over the past two years we have focused on Sápmi in order to strengthen our knowledge of duodji and Sámi culture. This work is continuing through our collaboration with our 2020-21 guest curator Zoe Black, community development curator at Objectspace, Aotearoa New Zealand. Together Zoe Black, Objectspace and Norwegian Crafts are undertaking a collaborative project, titled Stories of Making: Across the Ocean, over the Mountain, aimed at creating opportunities for Indigenous practitioners and continuing the dialogue in the craft field between Sápmi and Norway, Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond.

A central part of the collaborative project is an online seminar programme taking place in November 2020, consisting of two films and three panel discussions. The filmed conversations are centered around the publication Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania edited by Karl Chitham, Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai and Damian Skinner, and the Arctic Indigenous Design Archive (AIDA) - a cross-border collaboration between Ájtte museum, Sámi arkiiva and Sámi Allaskuvla. Conversations, issues and points of interest from these presentations will inform the three panel discussions.

Two Zoom panels are still open to participation in November:

Zoom Session 2, Monday 23 November 8PM CET / Tuesday 24 November 8AM NZDT*
Stories of Making: Living knowledge will look at how practitioners from across Aotearoa and Sápmi have reconnected with and re-remembered practices of making, as well as discussing the strategies that have been useful when navigating old knowledge and new innovation. How are new tools and ways of working ensuring the growth of Indigenous practices?

Zoom session 3, Monday 30 November 8PM CET / Tuesday 1 December 8AM NZDT*
Bringing together both curator and practitioner perspectives, Stories of Making: Engaging display will consider how we can respect Indigenous world views in contemporary spaces. If Indigenous perspectives aren’t embedded in an institution, how can we make these spaces safe for exploring Indigenous practices? When we move off our whenua (land) and into international spaces, what considerations change?

Read more about the Stories of Making project