Decolonizing Textile Praxis: From Theory to Ancestral Systems
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This is a high-level, self-paced course for textile designers and practitioners of African and Caribbean descent committed to the radical transformation of their work. Moving beyond symbolism, the course provides a rigorous, actionable framework to diagnose colonial systems embedded in your practice and rebuild from ancestral principles.
Grounded in the theories of Frantz Fanon, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Paulo Freire, Munyaradzi Mawere, Kamau Brathwaite, and Édouard Glissant, you will engage in critical self-audits, re-write project briefs using Ubuntu values, and design disruptive creative rituals. The curriculum culminates in the application of a unique Indigenous Practitioner Decolonization Tool System, guiding you to synthesize historical knowledge, personal positionality, and decolonial research into a coherent, transformed praxis.
Through detailed lessons, reflective and actionable tasks, and integrative projects, you will not just learn theory—you will draft strategies, design reciprocal knowledge-transfer protocols, blueprint new institutions, and produce a final portfolio that documents your journey from critique to creation.
📬 Personalized Feedback
To deepen your learning, you may submit your completed lesson tasks for personalized feedback from the instructor.
How to submit:
1. Complete all tasks for a single lesson.
2. Compose one email per lesson.
3. Use the subject line: Course Task – [Your Student Number] – Lesson [Number]
4. Send your task response(s) as text in the body of the email or as a clear attachment (PDF, Word doc, or image) to:
education[@]timbuktu-group.africa
Example Subject Line: Course Task – STU-2024-001 – Lesson 1
Please note that feedback is provided by the instructor and may take 5-7 business days.
Total Estimated Course Time: 5.5 – 7 hours
· Lessons: 315 – 375 minutes (5.25 – 6.25 hours)
· Quizzes: 30 – 42 minutes (0.5 – 0.7 hours)
Target audiences
- Primary Audience: This course is exclusively designed for students, artists, designers, and craftspeople of African and Caribbean descent who are engaged in textile and material practices and seek to fundamentally decolonize their creative methodologies.
- Heritage & Identity: Individuals consciously rooted in or reconnecting with African and Caribbean cultural heritage, who view their practice as an extension of ancestral lineage and contemporary identity.
- Professional Vocation Creative practitioners (weavers, dyers, fashion designers, textile artists, craftspeople) and advanced students who encounter the limitations and contradictions of Eurocentric design frameworks in their work or studies
- Critical Consciousness: Those experiencing intellectual and creative dissonance—recognizing that their technical training, business models, or aesthetic values may be misaligned with their cultural consciousness and community well-being.
- Decolonial Intent Learners actively seeking not just theoretical knowledge, but actionable systems and tools to audit, dismantle, and rebuild their practice from a foundation of African and Caribbean epistemologies (Ubuntu, relationality, Creolization).
- Transformational Goal Participants committed to moving beyond superficial “inclusion” of motifs to achieve deep structural change—transforming their creative process, value systems, knowledge transfer methods, and professional ecosystems.
Features
- · Theoretical Grounding in decolonial and liberation theory from their own intellectual traditions (Fanon, Freire, Thiong’o, Brathwaite, Glissant, Mawere).
- · Practical, Step-by-Step Frameworks to translate theory into studio practice, business decisions, and community engagement.
- · A Culturally-Safe Learning Space that centers their experience, avoids the emotional labor of explaining racism/colonialism, and operates from a foundation of shared historical understanding.
- · Pedagogical Rigor that matches university-level critical thinking while being directly applicable to workshop, studio, and market realities.
- · A Cohort of Peers on a similar journey, to break the isolation often felt by practitioners challenging dominant paradigms.
Curriculum
- 1 Section
- 6 Lessons
- 7 Hours
- Lesson12
- 1.1Lesson 1: Unweaving the Colonial Code in Your Practice
- 1.2Quiz 1: Unweaving the Colonial Code3 Questions
- 1.3Lesson 2: The Grammar of Value: Ubuntu vs. the Commodity
- 1.4Quiz 2: The Grammar of Value3 Questions
- 1.5Lesson 3: The Violence of Order & The Disorder of Creation
- 1.6Quiz 3: The Violence of Order3 Questions
- 1.7Lesson 4: Re-Membering Knowledge: From Extraction to Reciprocity
- 1.8Quiz 4: Re-Membering Knowledge3 Questions
- 1.9Lesson 5: Weaving New Institutions: From Individual to Collective Accountability
- 1.10Quiz 5: Weaving New Institutions3 Questions
- 1.11Lesson 6: Synthesis: Walking the Decolonization Tool System
- 1.12Quiz 6: Synthesis & Integration3 Questions
Instructor
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