Cultural values and living heritage practices are understood as an instrumental part of sustainable development. Textile design can engage communities in meaningful ways by inspiring conversation and interaction through the content of print patterns. New technologies such as smart phone apps and social media networks may hold opportunities to augment this potential.

Cultural sustainability

In order to understand better which opportunities design practice may hold to support and sustain cultural values and consequently support consumer behaviour that is value driven, it is important to define the role of culture in the context of sustainability…continue reading

The role of design

How than can design be employed to foster and facilitate human interaction? And further, how can design foster and facilitate human interaction that is meaningful and may lead to the construction of cultural values? This is an important differentiation and touches…continue reading

The role of technology

Because this research is situated in the context of emerging technologies and challenges their impact on African culture, part of the study has examined how such technologies could take on an active role in making textile design more instrumental to sustain cultural values…continue reading

Design output

In exploring design as a tool to facilitate the construction of cultural values through communication – investigated both with and without the use of technologies – this research has resulted in four different design prototypes…continue reading