Knowledge Keepers of the Silk Road Project

The Silk Roads have enabled us to make contact with each other. In the light of this enduring legacy, the Como & Seta Committee, founded to promote the “Como Candidate UNESCO Creative Cities Network” project, the International Traditional Knowledge Institute (ITKI US) and the KINEDIMORAE a collective of audio-visual communication experts, have promoted “the Knowledge Keepers of the Silk Road” project.

The main aim of the project is to create a docufilm: a spectacular historical journey through the origin of the Italian silk road, from Sicily to Calabria through Venice and Como, ending in Mexico and Brazil to tell the stories of the Knowledge Keepers of the silk. The promoters of the project interpret the silk road, not only as a merchant route, but also as a symbol of cooperation and interconnection, which breaks down diversity, age-old distrust and conflict; an ideal path which has promoted in the past and could promote in the future, thanks to this project, tolerance, excellence in thinking and doing, the culture of encounter and the discoveries of common values.

The “Knowledge Keepers of the Silk Road” project want to document, through videos and interviews to textile artisans around the world, unique histories of mutual exchange and dialogue, creativity and integration.
In addition, for this project, will be used the Creative Knowledge Platform to preserve and share interviews, texts, photos and videos to knowledge keepers and telling their working techniques.

In line with the words of ex-UNESCO’s Director General, Irina Bokova, “promoting cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue is the most powerful way to build bridges and lay the ground for peace” and in line with the UN SDGs 2030, 4, 8, 9 , 11 and 17, the project wants to tell deeper understanding of the diversity and interdependence of cultures and peoples along this route.