ISLAMABAD: Nomad Gallery on Saturday hosted the ‘Spring Crafts Festival’, showcasing traditional and contemporary crafts in Pakistan.

Arranged by Nomad Gallery and Serena Hotels, the event was inaugurated by Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman.

According to the organisers, Pakistani art and crafts had a long tradition and history of a wide range of skill, human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. Both highly dynamic and a characteristically constant feature of human life, they had developed into innovative, stylised and sometimes intricate forms.

This was often achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training and/or theorising within a particular tradition, across generations and even between civilisations.

The organisers said that crafts were a vehicle through which human beings cultivated distinct social, cultural and individual identities while transmitting values, impressions, judgments, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life and experiences across time and space.

Nomad Gallery has routinely supported the economic empowerment of women through its activities. Our spring crafts festival in collaboration with Serena Hotels remains a commitment of our collective belief in the continued pursuit of this endeavor, said Director Nomad Gallery Nageen Hyat.

The organisers said that the unprecedented rains this year had played havoc across most of the country, resulting in loss of precious lives and massive destruction all around. Dealing with a calamity of such immense magnitude through emergency relief operations was a challenge difficult to imagine. In addition to focus on women’s economic empowerment, Nomad Gallery has been focusing on supporting the families of the flood-affected areas.

“We have already conducted successful fundraisers independently as well as in collaboration with PNCA and donated all proceeds to PPAF and the Edhi Foundation. The crafts represented at the festival are made by the women of the flood-affected areas,” she said.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2023