Selling Yarns

Australian Indigenous textiles and good business in the 21st century

 

Speakers

Carolyn Wilson: Biography

Director, Better World Trading Pty Ltd

Carolyn Wilson is the Director of Better World Trading Pty Ltd and has a professional background in visual arts, having a degree in Fine Arts (painting). Wilson has been offered exhibitions for her own paintings but preferred to develop her ideas around art as an important cultural identity. She has been involved in importing handicrafts through Better World Trading for fourteen years, and initiated the Cross Cultural project in 1997. Wilson has worked as a lecturer in visual arts at Tauondi Aboriginal College Port Adelaide, and was on the Board of Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre in Adelaide for several years, holding the position of Chairperson in 1996 to 97.

Wilson has traveled extensively and learned the importance of the arts hold in cultures across the globe. In 1992 she returned to India with the original intention focused on a collaboration with Australian environmentally friendly technology manufactured and distribution in the domestic Indian market. Internal unrest disrupted these plans, but a serendipitous series of events led to a relationship with Kashmiri handicraft manufacturers.

Seeing the potential for a win win collaboration to develop, Carolyn became interested in working with Aboriginal artists and floated the idea with Kaltjiti Arts in 1996. Fortunately Kaltjiti had been given a grant from ATSIC for designs applied to manufactured product. They tried a number of different ideas. The collaboration with B W Trading was the one that worked. The project has become a unique artistic exchange between artists from the traditional Anangu Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara Lands and skilled traditional artisans from Kashmir.

See also: Abstract of Carolyn Wilson's paper:
Cross cultural project