“We knew that we could create a new conversation about tradition and technology, about recognizing activities that have historically empowered so many women and that are still doing it now, about the preservation of history from a different point of view, about storytelling. We knew that by braiding the relationship between them we could bring crafters and coders together, and show how connected their work is.”

“By connecting how binary systems work to the art of weaving, we started creating a thread that connects the past with the future. It is in the story of this connection that we are able to understand how humans evolved to design new tools but how the logic behind them is still the same.”

Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya and Renata Prazer run workshops called, ‘Weaving to Code, Coding to Weave’, wherein they mobilise the subversive potential of the stereotype of weaving as feminine in order to get women involved in coding. They do so in order to counteract the male dominance of the tech industry; or rather, the male, androcentric, associations of the tech industry and tech culture. In societies where tech and craft are seen as antithetical, revealing the similarities, and transferable skills, between coding and weaving can be really empowering, politically, economically and on a personal level. In an interview with Rodriguez Sawaya (found here) she explicitly states the impact of initiatives like Laboratoria, which provides women in Latin America with the theoretical and practical tools to start coding. Weaving is an ancestral skill for many Latin American women, and the synthesis of this cultural language can offer so many avenues for empowerment; providing alternative ways of attaining income using culturally meaningful skills. 

“This workshop is about creating analogies to facilitate the learning process, to connect communities that seem to be apart, to communicate and to honor the textile art, to create dialogue.”

An interview on medium with Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya: https://medium.com/@francescarodriguezsawaya/why-weaving-and-coding-matters-bc1e5dffaefd