We left Bangalore with the night train to Madurai, Tamil Nadu for a one week workshop at ROPE.
Their mission is to create products from natural materials and produce them with rural artisans for the global market. Because ROPE is growing constantly they recently opened a brand new fabrication hall where some things still have to be set up to handle new orders.
Since their old guesthouse was constantly being used as office, they now are renting an apartment for their guests. And guess what - we are the first ones to stay there and share it with Sreejith, one of the founders and Prasanna, the business development head. We are family;-)
But we also are designers... So we spent the first day exploring the manufacture and materials they use. Based on our drawings, discussions with the team and the possibilities they have, we developed ideas. ROPE wants us also to look at some of their products and think about how they could be improved. That’s an interesting task. With the knowledge and skill of the artisans we already made few prototypes and samples for baskets made of banana bark accordingly to our design...
