When art becomes the only source of livelihood

As many as 25 rural craft persons have displayed their products at the Lok Virsa in the category of textile designing to earn a respectable livelihood for their families. The event is open till September 12.
Lok Virsa Executive Director Khalid Javaid said on Sunday that their display was part of a training workshop in which they were being trained by the experts in the field to learn new techniques for making their products according to the market needs. He said the products on display included embroidery, block printing, Khes weaving, Lungi weaving, leather embroidery and many other forms of textile designing.
Under the auspices of the National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage, Lok Virsa had been training rural craft persons with expertise in various craft fields through a series of workshops.
The series of master artisans training workshops would provide capacity building for 768 marginalized craft persons/artisans, mainly from the rural districts with low income groups while more than 25 craft persons were being trained currently in the ongoing workshop of textiles to promote the craft heritage of Pakistan. The participants of these workshops were home-based workers living in the distant deprived areas, with limited or no linkage with big markets to sell their products.
Javaid said that besides getting trained in various fields, the participants would also display and sell their products at the Lok Virsa shops adjacent to the open air theater. He said the important aspect of these trainings was to provide exposure to the skilled artisans in value chain development and marketing practices through hands-on experience in the exhibition/marketing facility at the Lok Virsa.
While commenting on the textile workshop, he said “Pakistan’s history has the credit of a range and variety of its hand-made textiles. The existence of developed crafts of cloth weaving and dyeing in the Indus Valley five thousand years ago has been proved by the discovery of spindle whorls, bobbins, and a dyer’s workshop at Mohenjo-Daro”.
A greater part of Pakistan’s handloom cloth is made from indigenous cotton which remains a major cash crop of the country.
The traditional textiles of the country include a wide range of products created by master craftspeople such as khaddar, khes, lungi, sussi, shawls, carpets, pattu, patti, farrasi and other embroidered artifacts.
The textile crafts on this piece of land have a tradition that had continued to grow through the centuries. Woolen fabrics made in this part were exported to Syria and Egypt in the early decades of the Christian era while the growth of textile arts was influenced by the availability of raw materials, the nature of the landscape, climate, occupation of the majority of the population, native sense of color and beliefs and customs, all of which went into the making of the present day culture.
The simplest fabric of “khaddar” which is generally described as a rough cloth had held its peculiar charm ever since it made its appearance thousands of years ago. Besides a huge variety of fabrics being prepared today, Pakistani embroidery had been considered as the main embellishment of any material with pattern or design done with the needle and thread on material that reflects the local traditions, cultural and physical environment of the people and the places where the art developed.
Different areas of the country have their own distinct type and style of typical traditional work. During the Gandhara and Mughal periods, embroidery emerged as much patronized, significant craft while today Pakistan’s contemporary embroidery had been a blend of the old and new due to the ethnic mixture of the population.
Master artisan would get Rs. 5,000 as honorarium for training 5 fellow crafts persons and this would be given to them on the successful completion of the training during the marketing exposure/exhibition at provincial level such as craft, industrial and “Mela” exhibitions by the chambers of commerce and other related departments.