International Project “WEAVING”

Explanatory note

         Weaving was a kind of needlework and a way of earning money in Russia for many centuries and it was impossible to survive without it. In each peasant’s family clothes were made by hand: from growing the raw material, its processing and colouring to weaving linen, its decorating with embroidery and dressmaking.

         Manual weaving had a great success in Bashkortostan. People weaved curtains (sharshau), table-cloths (ashyaulyk), towels (tastamal, helge), bedspreads (keregeyabygu), praying rugs (namazlyk), carpets (kelem, balas), patterned linen for holiday clothes and others. Vegetable fibres (nettle, hemp, flax), sheep’s and goat’s wool, goat’s down were used as raw materials for weaving. Cotton yarn (kizhe) was developed on the borderline of the 19-20^th centuries.

       Clothes and articles of housekeeping applications were weaved on a manual weaving loom. There appeared a new kind of weaving — patterned weaving, in which a special technology of geometrical ornaments was used.

       In Bashkiria traditions of weaving with geometrical and vegetable desigh, colouring and making decorative patterns were passed from father to son. The Bashkir people’s soul has been living in them. Clothes were decorated with woven patterns. Patterned homespun goods played a great role in adorning dwellings, decorating festivals and special occasions, everyday and wedding ceremonies. In many areas of Bashkiria people would weave carpets (with nap and without it), as well as espaliers (wall carpets without nap and with ornamental and plot compositions).

             Due to realization of UN Convention of Invalids’ Rights and within UNESCO Project “Inclusive education” in Salavat College of Education and Professional Technologies there appeared a great necessity of creating training workshops of manual weaving for disabled people. The question is in organizing work in a weaving workshop and teaching a training course named “Manual weaving”. Disabled people will be taught and included in working activities. For achieving it there will be organized a sharing of Russian and German specialists’ experience in problems of professional rehabilitation of people with intellectual, mental and physical defects.

           The starting point was the idea that each patient has a little of a healthy person and he is a potential worker; a usual way of “going to bed” leads to apathy and further demolition of an individual. The most efficient use of strong qualities and abilities of a patient promotes to bend his energy to a constructive direction. In that way the patient can integrate the society. It turns out well if the work is done at the highest possible level. In some cases it’s necessary to subdivide the work into the shortest stages so it helps a patient fulfill a task as far as possible. Nevertheless, the aim of the labour therapy is to do as much as possible for promoting a complex integral labour process which helps a patient to show his initiative in work and come to his own decision, thus to develop his personality in the most possible way.

       Work in manual weaving can be really divided into stages in any way so it is possible to adapt it to a patient’s specific requirements. That’s why work in manual weaving is always used for therapeutic purposes.

I. Type of project: interchange, social, international, research work.

II. Goal and objects of project:

* Revival of the Bashkir people’s handicraft – weaving.

   * Study the German experience of weaving.

   * Creating a workshop of manual weaving for disabled people.

   * Working out a curriculum and methodical materials of the training course “Weaving” for disabled people.                                                                                  

   * Organising a training course of manual weaving manufacturing.                                    

   * General conclusion of scientific approaches in the Russian and German       systems of rendering help to disabled people.

   * Dissemination of the team-work experience on the republican, federal and International levels.

III. Addressed audience:

       institutions of education and social defence, disabled people and their parents.                                                                            

IV. Participants of project:

     UNESCO Committee in the republic of Bashkortostan, the State

     autonomous educational institution of secondary professional education

     Salavat college of education and professional technologies (SAEI SPE

     Salavat college of education and professional technologies), the Society

     “Bridge of Friendship Boden – Vyurtemberg – Bashkortostan”, the

     friendship society “ Bridges to Ufa”, Leyenhof, the manufacturing

     society “Agidel”.

V. Stages of project:

1)Preparation:

     1) to study the experience of organizing a work in German weaving workshops;

2) to work out a curriculum and a course of studies “ Manual weaving” incooperation with Leyenhof, Lautenbakh, Ferinbul (in 2013 −2014). 

2)Arrangement:                                                                                                                            

1)Assembling of weaving-looms and equipping of working places in SAEI SPE Salavat college of education and professional technologies (in 2015)

2) Elaboration of working instructions for disabled people (in 2015) 

3)Realisation of the training course “Manual weaving”.        

3)Completion:

1) to present the experience  at the regional, federal and international 

levels, including the UNESCO scientific educational resource center

(in2015 –2017) 

2) to lay down the prospects of developing manual weaver  production for disabled people in Russia. 

 4)Essence of project 

1) discussion of creating training weaving workshops in Salavat  at the   round- table meeting in Eslingen (December, 2014)

2) arranging Internationaldiscussion in SAEI SPE Salavat collegeof education and professional technologies 

3) organizing round- table meetings inSAEI SPE Salavat college of education and professional technologies to discuss problems of arranging disabled people at the labour market (April 8, 2015; July 2015)

4) organizing in German rehabilitation centers the experience exchange courses on the problemsof arranging disabled people at the labour market (a person in each year – 2013, 2014, 2015)

5) arranging courses of improvement of professional skills (in 2015 –2017)

6) presenting the first- rate work of themanufacturing society “Agidel” (in 2015 –2017)

7) functioning of the republican experimental laboratory titled “ Raising of disabled people’s social successfulness in the system of continuous   inclusive education” (in 2012 –2015)

8)holding scientific conferences (in 2015 –2017).

Prospects of development:

1) arranging disabled people at the labour market 10 persons in number till the year of 2017 

2) creating training workshops of manual weaving  for disabled people where  unique goods will be made  generalization and dissemination of experience on training in weaving workshops of SAEI SPE Salavat college  of education and professional technologies.