The traditional bamboo crafts as China’s valuable cultural heritage is faced with recessions. Design schools can integrate resources to provides solutions to the sustainable development of the bamboo crafts. Characteristics of stakeholders in the rural craft collaboration should be fully taken care of so as to achieve win-win outcomes with equality, which is conducive to long-term collaboration. With bamboo weaving craft of Xiangxi and Xiaoyu raw bamboo craft of Yiyang in Hunan Province as the study objects and based on fieldwork, workshops, design courses and practices, this study analyzes the advantages and limitations of local collaboration, on-campus collaboration and production collaboration and validates the positive impact of collaboration on stakeholders. In addition, collaborative models driven by culture, teaching, activity and service design are identified as four models that facilitate the development of the traditional bamboo industry based on the cases of other design schools in China.

Authors: Zhang Li, Fang Hai