From Dali to London: The Language of Craft and the Hidden Cultures of China’s Ethnic Minorities
Yiran Duan (Yi Crafts) will give the first ICCHA China Night seminar of Term 2 on 29 January, exploring craft as a living language linking heritage, identity and migration from Dali to London.
From Dali to London: The Language of Craft and the Hidden Cultures of China’s Ethnic Minorities
29 Jan 2026, 18:00 – 19:30
China Night Seminar Series – Term 2
This event is part of the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA) China Night Seminar Series.
We are delighted to open Term 2 with a talk by Yiran Duan, founder of Yi Crafts, a London-based East and Southeast Asian handcraft studio dedicated to sustaining traditional crafts from ethnic minority communities in Southwestern China.
In From Dali to London: The Language of Craft and the Hidden Cultures of China’s Ethnic Minorities, Yiran explores craft as a universal, non-verbal language that communicates identity, memory and connection. Drawing on her Bai heritage and personal journey from Dali to London, she reflects on practices including Bai indigo dye textiles, Miao batik, Yi embroidery and Dai bamboo weaving as living archives of migration, spirituality, ecology and community knowledge.
The talk also considers the founding of Yi Crafts as a platform for bringing endangered traditions into dialogue with contemporary life, and how craft practice invites us to slow down, reconnect with making, and engage with cultural diversity in new ways.
Yiran is a London-based artist, designer and cultural practitioner from Dali, Yunnan, a region known for its Bai ethnic heritage. Raised in a family of traditional indigo dyers, she developed an early understanding of handcraft as lived cultural practice. She studied Costume at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and founded Yi Crafts in 2019 to preserve and share endangered ethnic minority crafts. Her work has featured in British Vogue, The Independent, China Daily & London Craft Week.
The seminar explores Bai indigo dyeing, Miao batik, Yi embroidery and Dai bamboo weaving, examining how these practices encode histories of migration, belief systems, ecological knowledge and community life.
Yi Crafts is a London-based handcraft studio founded in 2019 to preserve and share endangered ethnic minority craft traditions from Southwestern China through workshops, exhibitions, education programmes and cross-cultural collaborations.
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Further information
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes
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