Special thanks to Sara McBeen and Sara Dierck for producing this article.
The Guyana Project is made up of 11 young designers. As a group, we are united by an interest in sustainable materials and ethical working environments. Inspired to learn firsthand how our concepts become products, we traveled to Georgetown, Guyana in May of 2009 to work in the Liana Cane Factory, which uses only non-timber rainforest products (NTRP) and is run by local activist and entrepreneur Jocelyn Dow. This same factory welcomed designer William Gordon, whose experience in social entrepreneurship was featured on Core77 in December of 2008. Our trip was organized by Pratt Institute’s Rebecca Welz, a design instructor and artist, and designer Patty Johnson, of the North South Project.
In Guyana we met and collaborated with factory workers and indigenous artisan weavers from the Wai Wai tribe. For over 8 hours each day we steamed, bent, cut, sanded and wove alongside the men and women of Liana Cane. At each step of the way, our designs were also shaped by the material constraints and constant direction of the skilled workers, whose knowledge of this process greatly surpassed our own.
“You have to take pride in your work and know good measurement,” said Shawn Singh, who has been working at the factory since it opened in 1993. “The hardest part about the work is finishing. First you have to rough sand, then another sand with another grain of sandpaper, then you apply sand sealer, maybe twice, and then you sand again with a finer grain of sand paper. And then finally, you apply the lacquer.”
All of a sudden thick rain clouds came in and everything got so dark that I had to put down the nail gun. Forced to take a much-needed cool down in the downpour outside, I was aware of how closely factory life depended on the surrounding natural conditions.
In the end we are all left with more than just furniture. The individual connections we made with people like Shawn enhanced our work and our attitudes toward design. We have set out to rework the formula of an industry whose main objective has been to find the fabricator that will produce the product at the least possible cost; we are now interested in a more sustainable working model. Just as high school math teachers demanded that we “show our work” or our answers wouldn’t count, we feel that the final product no longer counts unless we are able to take full responsibility for the path to production, in addition to the end result.
The following accounts of the trip from each of the group members reflect on the moments that stood out for us. “Sancho, how much are you going to miss us?” we teased him a few days before we were to leave. He held up his fingers with an inch of space in between them and we all booed and told him he was a liar. It is perhaps presumptuous to assume that we have changed the lives and perceptions of the people that we met as much as they changed ours. We do however hold out some hope that we have left an impression that presents us as people who are interested in human relations, making new friends and sharing enriching experiences.
Group photo at factory, top, Liana Cane from above, top.
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