Session 11 summary
Creative Mountain Economy
It is a geographical-based vision to help the local community benefit with the help of design solutions for the community problems. Some of these solutions include;
- Temi Tea: where Echostream researched what the tourists loved to buy while visiting Sikkim. Since Tea was often taken back as souvenirs by the tourists, they came up with eco-friendly packaging for the tea. The organic tea was packed using traditional bamboo- weaving techniques to create green industries and local employment for the rural communities.
- toktok: While studying the different kind of terrains, it was discovered that there was mobility issue for moving large objects from one place to another. So they came up with the idea of tok-tok, which can be used in any kind of terrain.
- Healthcare: it was observed that there was lack of immediate healthcare and the people had to plan a lot before going to the nearest healthcare centre without any surety whether the doctor would be present there. So they developed an app which can be used both by the people and the doctors to share medical concerns. It also has an offline function.
- Helping the last Tibetan sheep herder: KaldenSinghi is last of sheep herders in Lachen, North Sikkim. He wanted to sell the sheep, since all his other shepherd friends had stopped. But he was made to reconsider it and a plan to reviving wool and natural dyes was brought up so as to give Kalden new ways of income. Even his shepherd friends were encouraged to return. This solution provided employment to others as well. Three types of completely woven clothes were the outcome, which can be worn in various ways.
- Bohoh: Bamboo weaving was hardly getting any weavers as Sikkim is not a big state. So a collection called BOHOH was started which sells utensils and tools made of bamboo.
- Work from the Himalayas: originally there were 44,000 rooms for tourist stays, but due to pandemic everyone was at home/ worked from home, so these places were left empty. But some people needed space to work at. Work from Himalayas invited young entrepreneurs who didn’t have any office space. For this they also tied up with local farmers for produce for the hotel, which made the farmers able to sell their produce. It was an environment where no one was coming in or going out. vii)Barphok Project: it was initially a 5 year scheme to train and employ 200 people. But the number had been cut down to 1/3rd of the original number.
- Product focused on pregnancy: started looking out for activities and developing prototypes.
A creative industry, in the end, is best for the mountain region and so there must be some steps taken to promote this field.
About the Speaker
Sonam Tashi
Design Entrepreneur
Gangtok
Sikkim
Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen is an industrial design graduate from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. He is a co-founder of a multi-disciplinary design studio called Echostream in Sikkim. The studio focuses on community-driven design solutions.
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