Visayas creative industries in the spotlight

BACOLOD CITY—Vilma Doloso, 69, works the small handloom, fashioning the hablon scarf with red and gold threads, unmindful of the crowd gathered around her.

Some of the onlookers took pictures, others tried to engage Doloso in small talk. She was obliging but all the while her gaze never left the loom.

It takes half a day to finish the scarf, Doloso said, who learned to weave when she was 9 years old, adding on a lighter note: “Indi man gid na dugay a (it’s not been that long).”

Doloso, who belongs to the Valladolid Looms and Weavers Association in Tabao, Valladolid, Negros Occidental, demonstrated hablon weaving at the Lihok Visayas 2018 Creative Industry Trade Fair that will run until Saturday at the Negros Museum here.

Hablon weaving, a tradition passed on to generations of women in Valladolid, is one of the creative industries in the province, and Doloso is only one of 10 women in their organization trying to keep it alive.

The association’s president, Mercedes Claor, said many of the group’s 37 members were either focused on their studies or plan to work abroad, leaving only the older women to continue the practice.

Efforts to preserve and promote hablon weaving in Central Tabao continue through project grants from the National Commission for Culture and Arts (NCCA) under the project Mugna, Tanya Lopez, project director said.

Along with the other nine communities in Negros Island, the Negros Cultural Foundation has been collaborating with local government units to help to not only preserve traditions, but ease poverty through culture and arts, Lopez said.

Apart from Valladolid, NCF has partnered with the municipal governments of Talisay, Kabankalan and Bago cities, and Calatrava and Murcia town in Negros Occidental, and the cities of Bayawan, Dumaguete, and Bais, and Amlan town in Negros Oriental to capacitate communities through Mugna.