Training designers in the Pluriverse: The experience of Studio Wudé with leather crafts in Senegal

Abstract

This article reflects on design and the training of designers from a West African perspective, based on the experience of Studio Wudé, a workshop which has been working in Senegal since 2006 to transmit endogenous knowledge about leather transformation. Through an analysis of the Studio's pedagogical design approach, the aim is to question in West African contexts the relevance of the historical dissociation between thinking and doing, at the genesis of a Western industrial capitalist design culture whose spread in West Africa has accelerated over the past five years via the emergence of higher design education based on a Western model in crisis. Studio Wudé adopts an unprecedented position by embracing within a single reflexive space the dual challenge of training designers and craftsmen in Africa: it advocates the singularity of an African design trajectory within the Pluriverse, conveying a different relationship to the world.