Ethical rugs championed by students

When you buy a rug you don't think who made it, do you? It's the beauty of the design, the combination of colours, the soft, luxurious feel that matters, and then you try and visualise it in the room you have in mind and probably check the price fits your budget. You may note where the rug was made, but not many consumers in the UK would think to question who made the rug, if they were a child in bonded slave labour, if they were fpaid, if they had enough to eat, anywhere to sleep, did they go to school...



Weaving designer rugs © Romano

 We are conditioned to keep to the safe questions, but fortunately GoodWeave, the international rug labelling scheme, is working to eradicate illegal child labour and is raising awareness of the issues, with the UK's young designers of tomorrow. Its latest initiative is a national rug design competition aimed at design and textiles undergraduate students. This is the 4th consecutive year the competition has been run and looks set for an unprecendented number of entries. Closing date for entries is May 20th and full details of the competition are available from http://www.goodweave.org.uk/

Thanks to sponsors Wovenground.com and Jacaranda Carpets GoodWeave UK has been able to provide informative Tutor Packs this year, not only teaching students about the different weaving techniques used in the making of rugs, but also bringing to their attention the plight of the children in India and Nepal, forced to work for up to 16 hours a day and often 6 or 7 days a week to make beautiful rugs, which are then sold for hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds in the UK.

Zixi Qu's winning design 2010

Buying a GoodWeave labelled rug is the only assurance we can have, as consumers, that we are not contributing to the despair of thousands of children.  We have the buying power to force the rug producers to pay adults a fair wage to do a traditional and highly skilled job, so that they can keep their children safe, fed and sheltered. 

Let's hope our young designers coming out of university have a more developed ethical conscience than previous generations, when they start work. Creating beautiful rugs should never ever be at the expense of children.

For further informatld exploitation in the rug industry, take a look at the video below.