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Artesana Yaruro elaborando un sombrero. ©

British Council

Among other crafts, women weave hammocks, bags and traditional costumes using fibres extracted from the Moriche and Macanilla palm trees. Men make canoes, bows and arrows.

Our work with the Unuma community included the organization of a series of workshops to foster traditional crafts as cultural points of reference, to promote collective work, and to design new Yaruro products, while safeguarding their crafts as cultural heritage.

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Natural dyeing process of moriche fibre. ©

British Council

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Yaruro bag made with moriche fibre and natural dyes. ©

British Council

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Yaruro hat made with moriche fibre (palm) and natural dyes. ©

British Council

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Yaruro basket made with moriche fibre (palm) and natural dyes. ©

British Council

yaruro-crafts-british-council
Yaruro bags and hat made with moriche fibre (palm) and natural dyes. ©

British Council

Weaving workshops

Design workshops aim to create a space for experimentation and innovation in crafts based on the community's cultural references, resulting in innovative prototypes.

Dyeing workshop

The goal is to reproduce in detail this part of the production chain, as well as to promote and begin the task of recovering natural dyes from the area.

Creativity and experimentation workshops

The main goal is to carry out concrete exercises to gain inspiration from their own cultural references, combining technical potential, key issues in local research, cultural values and the underlying potential of their current range of products, in order to obtain prototypes that could generate new lines of products in each group of artisans.