Insights from Alice Bernardo - Saber Fazer’s founder and coordinator

“Curiosity led me to investigate in-depth local resources and sustainable production processes.”

Alice Bernardo is the founder and the Coordinator of Saber Fazer and Ofício and is a specialist in education and transmission of technical knowledge in the fields of handmade and semi-industrial production in Portugal. She works as a trainer, consultant and researcher in these areas, specialising in producing raw materials and creating sustainable production chains from the environmental, social and economic points of view.

Alice shared with the GatewayCrafts team a little about her professional career and the birth of this project. During the interview, it was possible to better understand what led her and her business partner to develop GatewayCrafts and what their goals are.

“My colleagues at Saber Fazer and I have been thinking a lot about improving crafts education and making valuable technical knowledge mainstream.”

GC: Can you tell us more about your work and field experiences? What initially drew you to this profession, and how has your journey shaped your passion for craftsmanship?

AB: ” I'm a trained architect and founded Saber Fazer in 2011, when I had my brand of handmade accessories, using mainly wool and silk. I began to become interested in the origin of these raw materials. Curiosity led me to investigate in-depth local resources and sustainable production processes. Initially, Saber Fazer started as a knowledge recording project, later evolving into a company dedicated to education, research and consultancy in artisanal and semi-industrial production, focusing on textile fibres.

SABER FAZER is an organisation dedicated to researching, valorising and disseminating artisanal and semi-industrial production techniques. It is an educational and consultancy project whose main objective is to ensure the transfer of technical knowledge and to educate and raise awareness of the fundamental issues that involve these topics, which are environmental, social and economic sustainability.”

GC: As someone deeply rooted in the crafts area, what motivated you to embark on this project?
How do your passions and professional experiences intertwine with the objectives of GatewayCrafts, and how do you hope the project will positively impact artisans and learners in the long run?

AB: “My colleagues at Saber Fazer and I have been thinking a lot about improving crafts education and making valuable technical knowledge mainstream. We are very experienced in classroom training, being certified in Portugal as a VET provider, and running our programmes with the best trainers and craftspeople in the country. We have this very rigorous approach to teaching, and our programmes are deeply rooted in research and many years of practical experience. One of my passions is natural fibre production, which led to field educational programmes with important partners such as the Serralves Foundation, where we planted and processed flax and linen, produced silk and processed the wool from their flock of sheep. This led to our plot of land, where I cultivated a local variety of flax and dyeing plants, such as Indigo, for field training programmes and our research.

This accumulated knowledge led us to create a publishing house, one of the few dedicated to this topic. We already published a few books and have a new collection ready to see the day of light.”

“There were a few precedents to GatewayCrafts: In 2014 we pitched a proposal for a consultancy firm to prepare and submit an Erasmus+ proposal based on an e-Learning VET programme. We were successful, and the project later led to the creation of our digital school.”  

AB: “Despite the more traditional topics we address, everything we do has a future focus, and we are a naturally tech-savvy team. GatewayCrafts is the result of many reflections that I and my business partner have been doing on the future of learning, especially the shift from more structured and one-to-many kinds of learning to more dynamic, one-to-one and, why not, algorithm-driven processes.”

“We hope that GatewayCrafts, a project focused on digital learning, will contribute to closing essential gaps and divides in our society and sector, namely the age gap and the dichotomy of urban-rural.”

AB: “We will do this by presenting a pilot course with high technical quality, thought to be edited and delivered in different media (structured e-learning and social media) and with superb aesthetics. The aesthetical part is fundamental to catching the young learners' and social media users' attention and engagement, boosting the content visibility and fostering curation, recommendation and serependity. We hope that this will lead to the discovery of interests that can later represent new careers in craft. Hence the name, GatewayCrafts.”

At the end Alice left a piece of advise:

“Go to school, reach out to the best trainers and mentors, and do your homework. This is about long-term commitment, and you will probably need many years of practice to master your craft. It's hard work, but it will pay off!”