THEME DESCRIPTION

" The handmade has always been at the heart of human creativity, serving as a bridge between culture, utility, and identity. In today’s rapidly mechanised and digital world, the significance of handmade crafts extends beyond aesthetic appeal—it embodies sustainability, cultural resilience, and timeless wisdom. India's vast repository of craft traditions offers a living testament to the harmony between design, material culture, and tacit knowledge.

In India, acts of care have taken many powerful dimensions. Similar to the Chipko movement, the Save the Sundarbans movement mobilized efforts to safeguard the largest mangrove forests against industrial threats. On a more personal level, a lone father filled potholes at his own expense after losing his son in a road accident. Traditional communities, such as those in Meghalaya, care for their natural environment by preserving sacred forests with strict rules to neither bring anything into nor take anything out of the forest.

International Open Electives 2025, hosted at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, aims to bring together artisans, students, and design experts for a two-week immersive exploration of Craft Cultures and Craftlores. Under the broad theme “SHILP SANGAM: Rooted in Heritage, Shaping the Future”, the program will celebrate the diversity of national and international crafts, spotlight the role of Indigenous knowledge, and emphasise the sustainability inherent in traditional practices. Through hands-on engagement, collaborative projects, and reflective dialogues, participants will explore the multifaceted nature of craft—its rituals, cultural significance, and contemporary relevance.

The program fosters an appreciation for frugality, resourcefulness, and the intricate relationships between people, materials, and their environment by combining local wisdom with global perspectives. IOE 2025 aims to foster empathy and creativity, and cultivate cross-cultural connections through the universal language of making, honouring the handmade as a vital thread in the fabric of our collective future.

Today, design students engage with technology, learn the basics of design, and are exposed to the history of design, as well as its methods and approaches. However, they lack the cultural and social creative depth of craft practice, which has an inherent symbiotic relationship with nature, is rooted in the local context and climate, and has faced the vagaries of time, evolving to become a potent source of knowledge.

This year’s Open Electives seeks to break boundaries and invite master artisans as ‘design teachers’ from diverse practices and places to hold exploratory workshops with students. This methodology aims to shift the lens through which we view and engage with this vital practice. We expect this association to spark creative detours, an infusion of unbiased interdisciplinary participation, and breakthroughs through a different kind of rigour and outcomes that celebrate diversity in thought and contemporary themes in a traditional setting.

Students will get the privilege of co-creating with Master Artisans and discovering the historical foundations of the craft practice rooted in the cultural landscape."