"Titled Creativity in Conflict and Confinement, it launches this week at the Imperial War Museum London, and explores the role of craft during war, conflict and incarceration through a series of designs created by Liberty’s in-house studio, each developed with Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who serves as the project’s ambassador."
Do you remember the imprisonment of Nazain Zagharu-Ratcliffe in an Iranian prison for trumped up charges but in fact as a hostage for our government refusal to pay a debt. 2016, is the time when she was detained in Tehran and taken to prison, it caused a lot of controversy. Her husband Richard campaigned endlessly for her and probably his constant attention to the plight of his wife in jail brought about her release six years later. Apparently it has been turned into a television drama.
But Nazain has also collaborated with the Imperial War Museum through Liberty's. It is about craft in war, men and women confined to prison, whether prisoner camps or prisons. Liberty prints are pretty and are used in patchwork quilts, though the materials are quite expensive.
Nazain made her young daughter clothes whilst she was in an Iranian prison and the three materials she designed are on show. It struck me as a rather touching way of alleviating her grim experience.
I would like to introduce you a concept which has always struck me as a sensible way of keeping traditions going on.... Intangible Cultural Heritage, I think it came into being in 2003 by way of Unesco, though the idea of that had been round a long time. I remember Paul sending me photos of traditional crafts still being worked by artisans in Japan and presumably paid for by the state.
Intangible cultural heritage (ICH), made up of all immaterial manifestations of culture, represents the variety of living heritage of humanity as well as the most important vehicle of cultural diversity. The main ‘constitutive factors’ of ICH are represented by the ‘self-identification’ of this heritage as an essential element of the cultural identity of its creators and bearers; by its constant recreation in response to the historical and social evolution of the communities and groups concerned; by its connection with the cultural identity of these communities and groups; by its authenticity; and by its indissoluble relationship with human rights. The international community has recently become conscious that ICH needs and deserves international safeguarding, triggering a legal process which culminated with the adoption in 2003 of the UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. "
This must be a most interesting exhibition. Imagination and creativity cannot be imprisoned.
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