Folk Lounge Interview With Founder, Shagho: Why Cultural Sustainability Matters Now

In March 2024, a year after launching Folk Lounge, Shagho began formalizing what had been emerging organically: a practice of cultural programming that addresses urgent societal needs through textile arts. The grant-writing process demanded articulation—what patterns was she witnessing? What cultural deficits was this work addressing? The answers revealed themselves: broken knowledge transmission, digital saturation, hunger for embodied learning, and the widespread need for intergenerational connection.

In this conversation, Shagho explores cultural sustainability—the idea that culture functions as a fourth pillar alongside environment, economy, and society in sustainable development. She discusses her approach to designing cultural programs for institutions, and why textiles offer a vessel into intangible heritage that holds the capacity for joy and connection.

You've been designing cultural programs for museums and institutions. What are you seeing that makes this work urgent right now?

People at different life stages are returning to textiles—not as nostalgia, but as necessity. Post-COVID, there's genuine interest in growing yourself in community. People understand the ease of staying home, being comfortable, being on screens. But they're also seeking texture, sensory experience, embodied learning. We have better vocabulary now through neurodivergent awareness—we understand we need to engage our senses. There's a waking up to playfulness, exploration, experimentation. Being ready to give to community after isolating years. Understanding that to thrive, we need to create intentional moments for ourselves and with others.

You frame this through "cultural sustainability." How did you come to that framework?

I was really inspired by work of Amy Skillman, President of the American Folklore Society and previously Academic Director and now Advisor for the MA in Cultural Sustainability at Gousher College. But it's also showing up in larger institutional frameworks now. We've crossed a threshold—a moment of self-reflection after last century's colonialism where we can start to see the softer aspects of culture that need investment and protection. UNESCO's 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage marked this shift. LA County's OurCounty goals also address it. Cultural sustainability is increasingly recognized as a fourth pillar alongside environment, economy, and society in sustainable development.

What does cultural sustainability mean in practice?

It's about maintaining cultural identities, traditions, languages, and heritage over time while balancing cultural vitality with societal needs. Whatever negative effects we're experiencing in society exist because certain cultural capacities are missing or underdeveloped. How do we nurture those capacities to create balance? Heritage isn't just tangible—buildings, artifacts, sites. It's also intangible—practices, traditions, knowledge, skills, stories. That intangible heritage holds the capacity for joy and connection.

What cultural capacities have atrophied?

Being in the body. Being in nature. Learning to see, learning to be cyclical. Stepping outside our own experience. Being present, learning to connect. Breathing fresh air, recharging. These sound simple, but they're capacities we've lost. Cultural sustainability asks: how do we rebuild them intentionally? How do we safeguard intangible practices that hold the capacity for joy and connection?

UNESCO and LA County articulate these goals in policy documents. What's missing between policy and practice?

Activation. Institutions can create frameworks and fund programs, but culture happens at ground level through actual programming. This year I spent designing four programs—short and long form—exploring different concepts through textiles and embroidery techniques. Cultural programming bridges the gap between policy vision and lived experience. It combines knowledge transmission—bringing information, threads, connections that make something relevant today—with embodiment. Building body intelligence back through working with our hands, working with joy.

You've partnered with the Bend Museum, PAMA Pasadena Museum of History, and have upcoming work with Craft Contemporary. What does that collaboration look like?

Each program is designed specifically for that institution's context and collection. It's not one-size-fits-all. The work requires understanding what intangible heritage that institution holds or connects to, then creating programming that activates it. Sometimes it's connecting contemporary practitioners to historical artifacts. Sometimes it's bringing techniques from one culture into dialogue with another. Always, it's pairing lecture or context with hands-on practice. You can't just talk about textiles. You have to put your hands in it.

There seems to be significant institutional interest in this work. Why now?

Institutions are recognizing that static exhibitions aren't enough. People want participation, they want to learn, they want embodied experiences. Museums and cultural organizations are looking for ways to activate their collections and make heritage feel alive and relevant. Textiles offer a perfect entry point because they're universal, accessible, and inherently social. Every culture has textile traditions. The interest is there—institutions just need programmers who can design meaningful experiences.

You mentioned "hand intelligence" earlier. What is that?

There's cognition that happens through touch, through problem-solving with materials. When you embroider, you're negotiating tension, color relationships, spatial composition. Your hands are thinking. We've outsourced so much to screens and automation that we've lost touch with what our hands know. We've treated this as hobby or therapy, but it's actually sophisticated knowledge. That's intangible heritage disappearing in real time.

What happens when you bring different generations into these programs?

The older generation is shocked that young people want to learn. The younger generation is shocked these skills almost weren't passed down. There's grief in that recognition, but also possibility. We're creating spaces where elders can share what they know and feel valued for it, and younger people can receive knowledge without institutional gatekeeping. That's intergenerational transmission happening in real time—intangible heritage being actively safeguarded.

How do you think about the difference between passive heritage consumption and active cultural stewardship?

Passive consumption is viewing textiles behind museum glass, maybe buying something in the gift shop. You leave inspired but unchanged. Active stewardship is learning the stitches, understanding why patterns matter, teaching someone else, adapting techniques for your own context. It's treating culture as living practice that evolves while maintaining connection to its roots. That's what effective cultural programming creates—not spectators, but practitioners.

Why are textiles particularly suited to this work?

Textiles are universal—every culture has textile traditions. They're accessible—you don't need expensive equipment. They're portable, slow, inherently social. But more than that, textiles are a vessel for intangible heritage. They're an entry point into lineages and stories. Stitches existed before nation-states. When we look at textile traditions globally, we see how the same techniques are done differently. That speaks of lineages where people lived next to each other. We drew borders later and tried to say what we do is different. But textiles show us how unified we are.

LA County has textile histories most people don't know about.

Indigenous basket weaving, Mexican embroidery, Armenian needlework, Japanese sashiko, so many diasporic practices right here. But people don't know this. They think craft history happened in Europe. There's colonial amnesia about what's been here, what's still here. Part of my work is making visible the craft ecologies that exist in LA County—connecting people to practitioners, archives, and traditions in their own neighborhoods.

The history of ornament carries colonial legacies. How do you navigate that in your programming?

Museums are full of textiles extracted from communities. Craft knowledge was devalued when colonizers couldn't monetize it industrially. We're still living in those structures—who gets called "artist" versus "craftsperson," what's in galleries versus craft fairs, whose aesthetic is "elevated" versus "ethnic." My programs try to practice reciprocal cultural exchange—citing sources, compensating teachers appropriately, centering practitioners from the cultures being explored. It's imperfect, but it's intentional.

Modernism eliminated ornament. Why does bringing it back matter?

Ornament is celebration. It says: this matters enough to decorate. This moment is worth marking. We've been in utilitarian mode for so long—form follows function, minimalism, efficiency. But humans need beauty, ritual, the ability to mark occasions and honor what's meaningful. Embroidery is about adornment. It says life is worth celebrating.

How does cultural sustainability relate to environmental and economic sustainability?

Culture is the fourth pillar—it enables and drives the other three. You can't have environmental or economic sustainability without cultural health. If communities are disconnected, if knowledge systems are lost, if we have no practice of gathering across difference—we can't solve anything else. Cultural programming addresses this: how do we build capacity for people to connect, learn, share, and adapt together? How do we treat culture as something we actively tend? That's the work of cultural sustainability.

Cultural sustainability recognizes that society's wellbeing depends on maintaining both tangible and intangible heritage—the practices, traditions, knowledge, and skills that give communities identity and resilience. Through designing substantive cultural programs for museums and institutions, Shagho is demonstrating what becomes possible when we safeguard intangible heritage through active practice rather than passive preservation. Interest from cultural institutions continues to grow as more organizations seek meaningful ways to activate their collections and connect communities to living traditions.

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