Archives for September 2019

On the 24^th September, our project coordinators visited the EASD (School of Arts and Design) in Valencia, Spain, and presented the project to students of last semester Fashion Design Course led by Prof. Mar Moya.

The team was composed by members from the SSH team: Ester Alba, Jorge Sebastián and Mar Gaitán introduced the project and explained to young designers the importance of silk heritage and the evolution of designs in silk along European history. Later, Cristina Portalés from the ICT team, showed our Virtual Loom and how it can be used to preserve historical weaving techniques but also to get inspired and boost creativity.

They will apply all this knowledge in an amazing fashion collection that they will present at the beginning of 2020.

From the 18^th to the 21st September, Dr. Ester Alba, our Dissemination and Exploitation manager travelled to Kazakhstan in order to attend the 2019 General Assembly of the Silk Road Universities Network. This year’s theme was the “Role of Universities for Transforming Silk Roads into Peace Roads with Prominent Human Heritages” As Sungdon Hwang, SUN’s Secretary-General, said: “The most valuable lesson from the history of the Silk Road is that the key to peaceful coexistence and collective prosperity is to treat individual differences as a cause for celebration rather than segregation, best captured in Silkroadia-the spirit of ancient Silk Road.”

SILKNOW was also disseminated at the QS Worldwide International Education Forum: “Journey to Global Prominence: Harmony of Human Heritage and Advanced Technology” held at the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. There, Ester Alba presented SILKNOW and how it will impact on civil society by preserving historical weaving techniques and bringing them to the future. She also introduced some of our Open Access publications and some research done by our coordinators, Universitat de València, regarding the Silk Road project.

In SILKNWOW we believe in learning from each other and protecting silk heritage as it is a unique example of heritage. It is a link of union between different places, peoples and ideas.

Let’s keep this spirit alive by realizing how precious cultural diversity can be and how we can learn from each other, and from ancient and traditional ways of living.