KUWAIT CITY, Nov 25: Director of Sadu Craft Society Sheikha Bibi Al-Duaij Al-Sabah said that the society has worked for 30 years in preserving the traditions of weaving and transferring them towards future horizons to enrich the local cultural identity and the development of national contemporary creative artistic development, pointing out that this culminated in inclusion of the Kuwaiti Sadu art on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO. In a statement to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) on the occasion of the association’s celebration on Thursday, the 30th anniversary of its founding, Sheikha Bibi added that the association worked on refining artistic methods and manual skills and passing them on to the younger generations within serious educational plans and programs and preserving the rights of primary craftswomen to motivate and honor their artistic gifts.

She pointed out that the association worked during that period to encourage young people to work manually and innovate in the field of weaving and weaving traditions and to persevere in highlighting the Kuwaiti cultural heritage and introducing it locally, regionally and globally. She explained that the association was established in 1991 to preserve, document and introduce the rich and diverse heritage of textiles, and strive to celebrate the values of the beautiful past through dedication to giving, determination and creativity at work, weaving a bond and cultural identity for present and future generations. She pointed out that the Sadu Research Library is one of the Sadu Society’s initiatives, and it is a specialized library to assist researchers and contains a variety of documents, books and publications on many topics, in addition to studies related to art. Sheikha Bibi stated that the association has issued seven publications.

She pointed out that during the past ten years, the association provided several professional programs for traditional textile arts, including the ‘Fun with Weaving’ program for children, where they are taught the basics of traditional weaving in a fun and interesting way, and the ‘Anasj’ program, which is intended for adults to train participants in the arts of Sadu weaving. She said that for the sake of development and modernity, the Sadi initiative was established, whose vision is embodied in encouraging artists in Kuwait to be creative and innovative, and a Sadi studio was also opened in 2019 to provide a creative space for design and innovation in various textile arts. She mentioned that among the initiatives is also the “Textile Tales” initiative, which is an exhibition and contemporary interactive awareness initiative aimed at honoring textile artisans and discussing modern trends to appreciate these traditional arts, as well as hosting sculptures and manual activities that seek to explore the new Sadu in Kuwait.(KUNA)