azkasami
12 hrs ago
Scholarship / Craft is a form of inheritance that continues to breathe through time - applying to MAGMa [NEW]
I'm applying for Managing Art and cultural heritage in Global Markets. Here's my sop
"ہے لیتی سانس ساتھ کے وقت جو ہے وراثت وہ ہنر"
Craft is a form of inheritance that continues to breathe through time.
In the old city of Lahore in Pakistan, craft is not preserved behind glass. It lives and breathes within workshops, routines, and hands shaped by repetition. Long before I encountered cultural theory, I understood inheritance through textiles in the form of embroidery passed across generations, block-printing patterns repeated over centuries, and garments that carried history as quietly as they carried colour. Clothing, for me, was never ornamental. It was evidence of labour, survival, and the systems that determine which forms of cultural knowledge endure.
This awareness evolved into the central academic question guiding my work: how can craft traditions survive within contemporary economic systems without losing authorship, agency, or meaning? Every stage of my education has been a deliberate attempt to approach this question through multiple analytical lenses.
I pursued intermediate studies in Fine Arts and Economics to combine creative and structural understandings of cultural production. Graduating with the first position in my college with 98 percent, I developed analytical discipline alongside visual literacy, skills that later shaped my engagement with fashion as a research-driven field rather than a commercial one. I further developed this approach through a Bachelor's degree in Fashion Design, where my practice shifted decisively from form-making to inquiry. I began to treat clothing as a cultural method capable of carrying histories, identities, and economic relationships. My academic work focused on Pakistani textile traditions such as block printing, ralli (patchwork), phulkari, and chikan kari, examining them as living heritage systems rather than static decorative practices. Through archival research, material experimentation, and design-led inquiry, I analysed how these crafts function as repositories of collective memory while being reshaped by market forces. My undergraduate thesis on sustainable design practices rooted in craft preservation was exhibited at The Blue Door near Masjid Wazir Khan and earned me the distinction of valedictorian, with a CGPA of 3.96 out of 4, Roll of Honour, and a Gold Medal.
Beyond institutional education, I engaged directly with heritage in lived contexts through self-initiated field-based work. At Baba Gee Calico Printing in Islampura (Krishnagar), Lahore's oldest surviving block-printing workshop now run by its eighth generation, I proposed and conducted a design-research project focused on translating archival block-printing techniques into contemporary couture while retaining artisan authorship and process integrity. This work provided firsthand insight into intergenerational skill transmission, economic vulnerability, and the fragility of informal craft economies, realities often absent from aestheticized narratives of heritage. In contrast, my experience at ELAN, a leading luxury fashion house, exposed how traditional techniques are curated for international markets, revealing structural challenges such as authorship dilution, uneven value distribution, and sustainability concerns that cannot be resolved through design intervention alone.
These experiences led to a pivotal realization: heritage cannot be safeguarded by aesthetics alone. Sustainable preservation requires governance through institutional frameworks, ethical market regulation, and informed cultural policy. To situate my work within broader discourse, I actively engaged with global development and curatorial conversations through participation in the SDG Conferences in Islamabad in 2024 and 2025, as well as the Lahore Biennale 2024. These platforms allowed me to critically position craft sustainability within international policy agendas and contemporary heritage debates.
MAGMa is essential for the next stage of my academic trajectory because it directly addresses the structural questions my background has exposed but cannot resolve independently. Its interdisciplinary focus on art markets, cultural heritage economics, and global management aligns precisely with my interest in craft governance. The programme's multi-institutional European structure offers a comparative framework through which to analyse how different regulatory and market systems shape craft-based industries. Unlike conventional heritage programmes, MAGMa critically examines how cultural value is produced, circulated, and institutionalized, the very mechanisms that determine whether artisan traditions are protected or marginalized within global economic systems. Coursework in cultural economics, heritage policy, and market regulation within the MAGMa consortium is particularly relevant to my interest in evaluating institutional responsibility toward craft labour. My prior training equips me to engage fully with this framework: Fine Arts cultivated material and visual analysis, Economics strengthened value and systems analysis, and Fashion Design developed research methodologies grounded in material culture. MAGMa will allow me to integrate these strands through institutional and policy-oriented inquiry, bridging creative heritage with structural accountability.
For the Year 2 dissertation, I propose to examine South Asian textile crafts within global luxury and art markets, focusing on authorship, valuation, and economic sustainability. This research will argue that existing heritage frameworks often reproduce extractive logics by prioritizing market visibility over artisan governance. Using Pakistani block-printing and embroidery traditions as case studies, I will analyse whether current policies and market structures empower artisans or perpetuate asymmetrical value extraction. Methodologically, the project will combine cultural economics, policy analysis, and comparative market study across South Asian and European contexts. Comparative analysis with European art-market governance models will enable a critical assessment of whether global frameworks protect or erode artisan authorship, agency, and long-term livelihood.
Within MAGMa's academic community, I will contribute an informed perspective grounded in sustained engagement with informal craft economies and research-led design practice. I actively bring case-based material from the Global South into academic discussion and aim to challenge Eurocentric heritage frameworks by foregrounding labour, governance, and lived economic realities. I look forward to contributing through seminar dialogue, collaborative research projects, and peer critique by bridging material practice with policy-oriented analysis.
Post-MAGMa, I intend to return to Pakistan to work as a cultural policy researcher or programme consultant within heritage institutions, development organizations, or public sector initiatives. My objective is to contribute to institutional frameworks that bridge local craft knowledge with global market systems while safeguarding artisan labour, authorship, and agency. Without structural intervention, many of the craft communities I have worked with face irreversible loss of both livelihood and cultural ownership. By applying the institutional, economic, and policy training offered by MAGMa, I aim to support equitable, governance-led models of craft preservation rather than extractive modes of cultural value production. My IELTS score of 8.5 and consistent academic excellence confirm my preparedness for the intellectual rigour of an Erasmus Mundus programme. More importantly, my academic trajectory reflects a clear purpose: to engage with cultural heritage not as nostalgia or ornament, but as a system demanding ethical governance, economic sustainability, and institutional responsibility. Through MAGMa, I seek the tools to ensure craft continues to breathe without being consumed.
I'm applying for Managing Art and cultural heritage in Global Markets. Here's my sop
"ہے لیتی سانس ساتھ کے وقت جو ہے وراثت وہ ہنر"
Craft is a form of inheritance that continues to breathe through time.
In the old city of Lahore in Pakistan, craft is not preserved behind glass. It lives and breathes within workshops, routines, and hands shaped by repetition. Long before I encountered cultural theory, I understood inheritance through textiles in the form of embroidery passed across generations, block-printing patterns repeated over centuries, and garments that carried history as quietly as they carried colour. Clothing, for me, was never ornamental. It was evidence of labour, survival, and the systems that determine which forms of cultural knowledge endure.
This awareness evolved into the central academic question guiding my work: how can craft traditions survive within contemporary economic systems without losing authorship, agency, or meaning? Every stage of my education has been a deliberate attempt to approach this question through multiple analytical lenses.
I pursued intermediate studies in Fine Arts and Economics to combine creative and structural understandings of cultural production. Graduating with the first position in my college with 98 percent, I developed analytical discipline alongside visual literacy, skills that later shaped my engagement with fashion as a research-driven field rather than a commercial one. I further developed this approach through a Bachelor's degree in Fashion Design, where my practice shifted decisively from form-making to inquiry. I began to treat clothing as a cultural method capable of carrying histories, identities, and economic relationships. My academic work focused on Pakistani textile traditions such as block printing, ralli (patchwork), phulkari, and chikan kari, examining them as living heritage systems rather than static decorative practices. Through archival research, material experimentation, and design-led inquiry, I analysed how these crafts function as repositories of collective memory while being reshaped by market forces. My undergraduate thesis on sustainable design practices rooted in craft preservation was exhibited at The Blue Door near Masjid Wazir Khan and earned me the distinction of valedictorian, with a CGPA of 3.96 out of 4, Roll of Honour, and a Gold Medal.
Beyond institutional education, I engaged directly with heritage in lived contexts through self-initiated field-based work. At Baba Gee Calico Printing in Islampura (Krishnagar), Lahore's oldest surviving block-printing workshop now run by its eighth generation, I proposed and conducted a design-research project focused on translating archival block-printing techniques into contemporary couture while retaining artisan authorship and process integrity. This work provided firsthand insight into intergenerational skill transmission, economic vulnerability, and the fragility of informal craft economies, realities often absent from aestheticized narratives of heritage. In contrast, my experience at ELAN, a leading luxury fashion house, exposed how traditional techniques are curated for international markets, revealing structural challenges such as authorship dilution, uneven value distribution, and sustainability concerns that cannot be resolved through design intervention alone.
These experiences led to a pivotal realization: heritage cannot be safeguarded by aesthetics alone. Sustainable preservation requires governance through institutional frameworks, ethical market regulation, and informed cultural policy. To situate my work within broader discourse, I actively engaged with global development and curatorial conversations through participation in the SDG Conferences in Islamabad in 2024 and 2025, as well as the Lahore Biennale 2024. These platforms allowed me to critically position craft sustainability within international policy agendas and contemporary heritage debates.
MAGMa is essential for the next stage of my academic trajectory because it directly addresses the structural questions my background has exposed but cannot resolve independently. Its interdisciplinary focus on art markets, cultural heritage economics, and global management aligns precisely with my interest in craft governance. The programme's multi-institutional European structure offers a comparative framework through which to analyse how different regulatory and market systems shape craft-based industries. Unlike conventional heritage programmes, MAGMa critically examines how cultural value is produced, circulated, and institutionalized, the very mechanisms that determine whether artisan traditions are protected or marginalized within global economic systems. Coursework in cultural economics, heritage policy, and market regulation within the MAGMa consortium is particularly relevant to my interest in evaluating institutional responsibility toward craft labour. My prior training equips me to engage fully with this framework: Fine Arts cultivated material and visual analysis, Economics strengthened value and systems analysis, and Fashion Design developed research methodologies grounded in material culture. MAGMa will allow me to integrate these strands through institutional and policy-oriented inquiry, bridging creative heritage with structural accountability.
For the Year 2 dissertation, I propose to examine South Asian textile crafts within global luxury and art markets, focusing on authorship, valuation, and economic sustainability. This research will argue that existing heritage frameworks often reproduce extractive logics by prioritizing market visibility over artisan governance. Using Pakistani block-printing and embroidery traditions as case studies, I will analyse whether current policies and market structures empower artisans or perpetuate asymmetrical value extraction. Methodologically, the project will combine cultural economics, policy analysis, and comparative market study across South Asian and European contexts. Comparative analysis with European art-market governance models will enable a critical assessment of whether global frameworks protect or erode artisan authorship, agency, and long-term livelihood.
Within MAGMa's academic community, I will contribute an informed perspective grounded in sustained engagement with informal craft economies and research-led design practice. I actively bring case-based material from the Global South into academic discussion and aim to challenge Eurocentric heritage frameworks by foregrounding labour, governance, and lived economic realities. I look forward to contributing through seminar dialogue, collaborative research projects, and peer critique by bridging material practice with policy-oriented analysis.
Post-MAGMa, I intend to return to Pakistan to work as a cultural policy researcher or programme consultant within heritage institutions, development organizations, or public sector initiatives. My objective is to contribute to institutional frameworks that bridge local craft knowledge with global market systems while safeguarding artisan labour, authorship, and agency. Without structural intervention, many of the craft communities I have worked with face irreversible loss of both livelihood and cultural ownership. By applying the institutional, economic, and policy training offered by MAGMa, I aim to support equitable, governance-led models of craft preservation rather than extractive modes of cultural value production. My IELTS score of 8.5 and consistent academic excellence confirm my preparedness for the intellectual rigour of an Erasmus Mundus programme. More importantly, my academic trajectory reflects a clear purpose: to engage with cultural heritage not as nostalgia or ornament, but as a system demanding ethical governance, economic sustainability, and institutional responsibility. Through MAGMa, I seek the tools to ensure craft continues to breathe without being consumed.
