The Market Showcases the Power of Co-ops to Change Local Economies, Expectations — and Lives
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Contact: Clare Hertel
505-670-3090
At the 5th Annual Santa Fe International Folk Art Market 22 artists’ co-ops and like organizations, representing more than 4,500 artists, will be part of the 2008 Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, taking place July 12 – 13, 2008, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The organizers of the Market are encouraged by the large number of international co-ops producing quintessential folk art, because the groups have an extraordinary ability to improve the lives of the artists, their children, and communities, while preserving their individual cultural traditions. Artists’ co-ops taking part in previous Markets have used profits from their sales to buy communal plow animals and goats, build health clinics, provide college scholarships, and give away free, much-needed eyeglasses to groups of lace makers formerly sharing one pair.
“Many of the co-operatives represented at our Market have built sustainable economic and social synergies through the creation of agreements made and strictly enforced by partnerships between the community, its artisans, and the cooperative,” says Judy Espinar, co founder and Creative Director of the Market. Espinar estimates that the folk artists’ cooperatives coming to the 2008 Market will directly affect the livelihoods and well-being of over 30,000 individuals.
The majority of the international artists’ co-ops accepted into the 2008 Santa Fe International Folk Art Market are run by women, which is one of their great strengths. Many find that women in developing nations are entrepreneurial, ingenious, and generous toward family and community, able to provide huge benefits on small profits. Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus pointed out in a New Yorker article that, “traditionally, Third World banks lend only to men.” Yunus developed the policy of lending mainly to women not only because they were more responsible about repaying the loans but because families benefited more when the women controlled the money.
An outstanding example of this trend is Nilda Callañaupa, director of The Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, Peru. Nilda manages co-operatives in three villages where weavers create exquisite Andean textiles, preserving a 2,000-year-old tradition that had been threatened with extinction. Callañaupa’s goal is not just to preserve and to study Peruvian textiles but to assist families to create a larger market for their textiles and a new economy for their communities. To that end, Callañaupa has drawn up extensive “agreements” that spell out the responsibilities, expectations, and benefits of the co-op for the individual artists, the cooperative as a whole, and the community. She will be making a presentation about her co-op’s agreements just before the 2008 Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, as part of a special series of business-training seminars for artists sponsored by the Market.
Surprisingly, cooperatives, as an enterprise, have gotten little attention in the mainstream media, despite their enormous and growing impact. As Callañaupa says, “Here in Peru, weaving is an art that we live with every day and for us it is more than an art, it is an historical part of the living culture.” The co-op that she heads up, like so many of the others that will be coming to the 2008 Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, ensures that the traditions and the history survive as the artists find economic and social sustainability through their work.
Contact: Clare Hertel
505-670-3090