At the beginning of this year, 2023, we teamed up with the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae) Minas to co-create the methodology for the Mãos à Moda Project, an initiative that seeks to rescue Minas Gerais’ authorial identity and clothing. We started in Almenara and have now arrived in Santa Bárbara to enable economic dynamization, generating income and social innovation through the fashion and local handicraft production chain.
The municipality of Santa Bárbara is located in the Serra do Espinhaço region, whose bucolic climate and proximity to the Caraça Sanctuary make it an important tourist destination for Minas Gerais. In the region, we have been working with two groups and two different types of pottery – weaving and ceramics – with the Casa das Tecelãs de Brumal (a district of Santa Bárbara) and with the Coletivo Olaria Urbana (Urban Pottery Collective) in the town’s headquarters. And we’ve had a warm welcome from both of them – which makes the process much easier!
Methodology
The Santa Bárbara Fashion and Handicrafts Project – Weavers of Brumal and Urban Pottery is also the brainchild of Sebrae Minas, combining the Mãos à Moda and Origem Minas projects, and has a partnership with Celulose Nipo-Brasileira S.A. (Cenibra).
Raízes Desenvolvimento Sustentável’s work is based on active listening. We began the project by mapping the identity of the territory and its resources, getting to know the oral history of the artisans: an effective cartography to understand their memories, in order to jointly build identity traits that can further enhance the craftsmanship of these professionals, as well as strengthening them as a group.
At the moment, the project has completed the participatory mapping and identity mapping phase of the territory and is beginning the strategic planning and new product development stages.
As with all Raízes projects, the systemic development actions began last month to open up the connection between them, the understanding of the role and strength of each one in the group; as well as the understanding of how to position themselves within these collectives.
Peculiarities of the Mãos à Moda Project
Each territory is unique. And having the opportunity to implement the same project in different regions always gives us that evidence. Mãos à Moda, in Almenara, for example, is in the origination phase, which also includes creating individual and collective enterprises.
In Santa Bárbara, on the other hand, the two groups we have been working with have been there for a long time and have been built up organically. This often means, as is the case here, that the enterprises haven’t had the opportunity to reflect on strategy and the positioning of their businesses before or during their creation, as well as to deepen their identity in production.
The most significant deliverable of this project is the understanding of local identity and unique resources and how they relate to handicrafts; the elements of memory and the elements of the territory, bringing greater added value to production and the market, but also more meaning to them.
With these actions, we hope that handicrafts and their restructuring through Santa Bárbara Fashion and Handicrafts: Hands on Fashion will be a uniting point to leverage the governance of both groups and the relationship between the two. Through this type of initiative, the two can collaborate and find a point of intersection.
Social innovation and Christmas launch
In the two groups in Santa Bárbara, the big news for this year will be some innovations in the handicraft products with the creation of capsule collections that will be launched for Christmas. For this, we are counting on the work of professionals such as textile designer Ana Vaz at Brumal and handicraft designer Mazzarello Carneiro at Olaria Urbana.
Let’s wait and see!
