CREATIVE HANDSCAPES INITIATIVE

Self-production of shoes as antidote to retail therapy

What is Shoe Folk?

Shoe Folk is primarily a production and service platform that researches, innovates, and mediates folklife handcraft knowledge in the field of footwear – its heritage as well as its practices. As an embassy of traditional handcraft skills, we rekindle lost and forgotten techniques from diverse cultures in the midst of a society where the awareness for resource-friendly production processes is increasing, along with a desire for quality and participation.

Shoe Folk encourages enthusiastic DIYers, enterprises, educational institutions, and the therapeutic field to employ the creative act as a way of reflecting upon one’s own actions and thereby stimulating new approaches and solutions. Shoe Folk cultivates the satisfying experience of practising a original trade. Spaces for manual creativity have an ordering and transforming effect on us – we are in flux.

The participative concept of Shoe Folk, a Noah’s Ark for handcraft, should be seen and should grow. You too are invited to join! The basis of this mediation work involves the realms of preservation and research as well as inventorisation and documentation.

SHOE FOLK

Activities at a glance

Researches

Experience and learn the knowledge of ethnic cultures through handcraft art.

CONNECTS

Re-establishing an authentic connection between the present day and the origins of our cultural heritage through direct contact with those who are actively practicing it.

PRESERVES

The cultural diversity of the craft of shoemaking is preserved and given a new lease of life.

TEACHES

A way to finding ecological, social and cultural self-confidence through practice-oriented workshops and evocative storytelling.

ACTIVE TOGETHER

Be active and get in touch – we bring craft folk together and invite you to join our co – labor – a(c)tion!

OPENS

Social Footwear means the simplest tricks leading to an autonomous lifestyle are used and made openly available.

COMMUNICATES

The desire to do things for yourself. To forge new paths – in your self-made shoes!

Who we are?

Hand & Heart the Shoe Folk Embassy Initiative is Bernadette Hehenberger, supported by her craft folk – artists, designers and handcraft workers.

Shoe Folk encourages enthusiastic DIYers, enterprises, educational institutions, and the therapeutic field to employ the creative act as a way of reflecting upon one’s own actions…

Motivation and Background

In Austria the production of shoes and accessories (unfortunately) has been almost entirely outsourced abroad. We purchase our goods from an anonymous global mass market. Both the skills connected to the manufacturing of these products and the economic value added are thus lost for the people and the enterprises. Therefore, we strive for a new experience of traditional techniques and materials.

Glamorous Shoe BiZ?

We are investigating the consequences of a shoe market oriented towards fashion trends for the environment and society. The transformations in the global footwear industry are having drastic effects on the environment, mainly through significantly increased consumption of resources and energy, including high levels of water usage, waste water load, use of chemicals, general waste and air pollution