Designing for the better
Juhi Pandey is an alumna of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and National Institute of Fashion Technology, Chennai with a career in Textile Design spanning over two decades, in the industry, the social and craft sector. Juhi is currently in Shillong, Meghalaya setting up the Centre of Excellence for Khadi for the North East, which is a collaborative project between National Institute of Fashion Technology, Delhi and Khadi and Village Industries Commission, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
Design to her is responsibility and service to create a better community and environment for everyone to live. Having realised that most of the makers of the crafts are the most marginalised, she went ahead with a conscious approach to help in the area of creative learning.
Some of her significant projects include Tilonia, ‘1000 Crane Project’ with the Tara Trust, with Khamir; an exchange project with a studio from Wales. Currently, she is working with ‘Khadi India’ in the North-eastern region.
At Tilonia she followed a bottom-up approach. The principle of bottom-up approach is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi around values like equality, self-reliance, austerity, decentralisation, collective decision. The vision behind establishing the Center of Excellence for Khadi in Northeast was to enhance the prevalent story of khadi in few institutions and also involve more people from the community facilitating design, innovation and market driven processes.
On her encounter with the Tara Trust, Juhi had set up a 1000 Crane Project. The Project encourages children to learn about natural disasters. The inspiration behind 1000 Crane Project is the story of Sadako, who after being diagnosed with
Leukaemia, folded origami paper cranes in hope of making a thousand of them. She was inspired to do so by the Japanese legend that one who created a thousand origami cranes would be granted a wish. Her wish was simply to live through her disease. The project was taken to Ladakh where children donated clothes. With Tara Trust they bought T-Shirts, painted cranes on them and sent them to Japan, for the Tsunami victims. This was possible due to help from friends regarding shipping expenses and distribution in Japan as a sign of solidarity and peace. The T-shirts made their way to Orphans affected by the Fukushima disaster after being exhibited in three museums. Juhi thus believes that if intention is good, motivation is strong then money cannot be a hurdle.