An afternoon’s work? Ha!

Its the summer 2015, I get a call.

Do I want an afternoon’s work filming an art installation? Something about The UN, climate change and a dress made from a tent, that had once been the home for a family of Syrian refugees in Jordan.

Sure!

Ten years later, I’m still working on the same project, at least it’s latest iteration - two custom-trained AI models by Titles.xyz created to bring refugee art onchain. On base.

Exactly how an afternoon’s work lead me here—via the streets of London, The UN, Glastonbury Festival, Jordanian refugee camps and The Venice Biennale—is another story for another time.

This chapter begins in Dzaleka, a refugee Camp in Malawi.

Dzaleka

Dzaleka is home to over 50,000 refugees fleeing violence in neighbouring countries. It’s over-crowded with insufficient health services, water, shelter, and sanitation.

Dzaleka Arts Lab evolved from a project by a team from University Arts London and thirty residents in Dzaleka.

A collaborative arts group empowering artists through traditional craftsmanship and storytelling, predominantly working with textiles.

Initially my role in the project was to work remotely with a young refugee filmmaker in Dzaleka, Johnson Burume, to help him capture the emerging story and to produce a video documenting the fashion and music scene in the camp.

In the end, many other things emerged and I got sucked into the project again.

The Map: (Mahali - 'place')

The first project to be co-created by the community was a collective narrative expressed through embroidery; each piece representing a personal story or logos of the creator.

At the suggestion of the members of DAL the pieces were brought back to the London College of Fashion and combined into a map of Africa. A collective co-created artefact grounding the narratives of over 30 people into a representation of place.

When I saw the piece for the first time I realised it deserved a life beyonds it’s physical form.

Energy DAO

I was interested in finding a way to bring bring the work of Dzalaka Arts Lab onchain, to help generate income for members through NFT sales.

I’m a member of Energy DAO, a creative grants collective built on Nouns Builder, that funds arts and cultural projects on the Superchain. I submitted a proposal for 1 ETH to prototype ways to bring Dzaleka Arts Lab onchain, and got the nod.

The DAL community decided on a theme for their next collective artwork—Home.

It wasn't what any of us expected.

Pockets: ( NYUMBANI - 'home')

 ‘Pockets’ is constructed from the pockets of over 200 pairs of recycled jeans originating from a local scam. Originally planning to make tote bags from second-hand denim skirts, the group received shorts instead. Forced to adapt, they creatively reused the pockets to build an epic tapestry, over several months of work.

The pockets symbolise the reality that, when fleeing home, as many of them had, everything meaningful you carry fits in your pockets.

An amazing piece of work, but how do we bring it onchain?

Co-co-co-creation with Titles.xyz

Both artworks are collaborative physical pieces that contained the narratives of the people who had made them. We wanted to carry this theme of co-creation onchain.

So we turned to Titles to help create two artist-owned AI models that would allow anyone to create their own AI -generated work inspired by the original physical art works, and to collect the work of the collection to become part of the evolving story.

The Process

The first step was to create, mint and share the training data for the models.

These were essentially curated and cropped photographs of the details of the artworks that we wanted the model to use. The team at Titles then trained the models, tested and tweaked them to get the best results from a range of different prompts.

The Models

You can mint you own creations with the two custom trained models, DAL receives a portion of the fees from each mint to help support the community.

Dzaleka Stitch: Pockets | TITLES

Created by Dzaleka Arts Lab, an arts community in Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi from recycled jean pockets, each that contains a personal message, stitched into a denim tapestry. All mint funds go to supporting the community.

https://titles.xyz

Dzaleka Stitch: The Map | TITLES

Created by Dzaleka Arts Lab, an arts community in Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi, who shared their personal stories stitched into cloth. All mint funds go to supporting the community.

https://titles.xyz

NYUMBANI - 'home'

The DAL community have created a collection of 10 pieces using the Dzaleka Stitch: The Map model.

Each piece is a collaboration of three members, with the prompts seeded from a three word slogan and corresponding image inspired by the slogan.

All mint funds received will go towards supporting the community and their ongoing work.

TITLES

Creative tools powered by artist-trained AI models.

https://titles.xyz

Become a supporter of DAL

The images from the training data are available as 1/1 NFTs to collect for 0.05 ETH on base HERE. All proceeds go to support the DAL community. All proceeds go towards funding and supporting the community directly.

DAL Website

Dzaleka Arts Lab

cargo.site

https://www.dzalekaartslab.org