Supporting Balinese craft in events : how we collaborate with local artisans

As an event production company based in Ubud, Bali, we’ve always been passionate about creating events with a strong Balinese identity, featuring both contemporary and traditional elements. We’ve found many like-minded collaborators over the years and are grateful for their contribution to our events.

Often events in Bali ignore the rich traditions and people of the island, choosing instead to become another bland event that could be held anywhere in the world, instead of taking advantage of the incredible resources we have here.

Even worse, perhaps, are the events that pay lip service to the Balinese people and arts, using it as ‘window dressing’ while congratulating themselves on promoting Balinese culture. Behind the scenes, we hear stories of event organizers refusing to pay anything but tiny amounts to Balinese creators (and asking them to be grateful for the exposure) while splashing out on international talent.

Supporting Heritage Through Events AKA Pay People a Fair Fee

We are proud to work with Balinese artisans, performance groups and craftspeople. We don’t see it as us doing them a favor, but rather an honor that they take the time to work on something with us.

The number one way we support our co-collaborators is to make sure they get paid a fair fee for their work. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard stories of groups being massively underpaid or, even worse, berated for daring to ask a fair fee from event producers. Why do people think art workers and artisans shouldn't be paid properly? Why do they think that traditional art should be cheap?

Paying artisans a fair fee is crucial for preserving cultural heritage and supporting local communities. When event organizers compensate artisans appropriately for their work, they acknowledge the value of traditional skills and the time invested in honing these crafts. Fair compensation ensures that artisans can sustain their livelihoods, continue their work, and pass their knowledge to future generations. It also helps maintain the quality and authenticity of the art forms, as artisans aren't forced to cut corners or mass-produce items to make ends meet. Moreover, fair payment practices foster a relationship of mutual respect and trust between event organizers and artisans, leading to more amazing collaborations and better outcomes for events. By prioritizing fair compensation, event companies not only contribute to the economic well-being of local communities but also play a vital role in keeping traditional Balinese arts alive and thriving in the modern world.

We can also add the importance of good working conditions aka making sure people always have extra funds allocated for transport, that workers and performers get good food every six hours, lots of water, and a nice place to wait or rest. These are small details but so often forgotten.

Incorporating art and culture into Bali events

This can be done in so many ways (while always being mindful of cultural appropriation) in Bali. From decor, and food, to attendee gifts, and performances or experiences during the event, as well as making sure the spiritual needs of an event are take care of.

We always start every event with offerings at the physical site to ask permission of the inhabitants and also to ask for a smooth event. We often work with priests for rain stopping rituals before outdoor events.

The Balinese decor scene is incredible and the natural materials make it a great way to reduce the environmental impact of an event by cutting down on plastic, styrofoam and paper. The best thing is the flexibility and creativity of the craftspeople, any event producer’s dream. We’ve asked the impossible and it’s been delivered, jumping from our imaginations into reality. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

We also love to have the artists and artisans be present at the event, to either deliver the attendee gift directly, or to provide an experience that the guests won’t forget. This also help attendees connect more deeply to the gift and respect the process of creating and the humans that make it happen. Working with local makers often leads to more personalized, high-quality products while reducing waste associated with mass-produced, imported items.

From an economic perspective, collaborating with local makers keeps money within the community. This approach also promotes cultural sustainability by maintaining traditional arts and crafts, which are integral to Bali's identity.

Behind the design: Events at Uluwatu Surf Villas

We’ve been working with the team at Uluwatu Surf Villas for a few months now. Such an incredible property and landscape to get inspiration for our work.

High on the jagged cliffs towering over Southwest Bali’s world-famous waves, is the definition of surfer’s paradise: Uluwatu Surf Villas. Blessed with private access to the sand and surf, it’s the place where active soulful pursuits meet Bali’s singular mysticism and warm hospitality. Premium villas, bungalows and loft accommodations—hand-built with reclaimed teak and ironwood, plus Balinese artisan-crafted decor and antiques—are idyllic windows to a magical world

The seaside, the beach, the ocean, so many places where the imagination can express itself without limit. The escape of thoughts, the freedom of the spirit, the lightness of the movements—all inspiration for art directing, in a nod to their surf heritage and identity.

Events at Mana Uluwatu and Uluwatu Surf Villas are focused on community, relaxed vibes, and, of course, the incredible ocean and sunsets in all moods and forms. We chose to work in a liquid feeling to their artwork.

Working from their existing brand guidelines, we created a cohesive look for their digital event promotions For regular events (Wednesday Jazz Nights and Friday Poolside Beers) and for special one-off events (workshops, opening of their new skate park, & special music guests).

Get to know: Summa Durie, Curator and Artist

We caught up with our dear friend Summa Durie recently to ask her what’s new in 2020, what she thinks about everything that’s happening in the event space, and to tell us what’s going on in her world of art, events, curation and more.

Photo by Roberto Aria Putra. of Summa durie with Roa

What was your favourite moment today?

We recently moved back up to Ubud to what I can only describe as a little smurf village. Our balcony looks out over a jungle garden and rice fields—a view normally saturated in greens, sky blues & pops of tropical colours. Today started with a rainy, misty morning but suddenly through all the greys and blues the most brilliant, eery orange appeared on the horizon as the sun tried to peek through. I am kind of obsessed with colours at the moment so this stuck with me.

Tell us about the projects you are working on…

And which one has your heart right now? I am the International Curator for an art space here in Bali called Rumah Sanur - Creative Hub. In 'normal' times this is a bustling place that hosts art, live music, festivals, markets—last year alone we welcomed 32,000 people through our doors, held 450 events/concerts/art exhibitions, and held workshops for over 6,000 participants. I am also the Co-Curator of TEDxUbud (working with the awesome folks at Elami & Co) and a freelance curator. In the crazy times we are living through right now a lot of this curatorial work has come to a standstill as gathering people has become slightly tricky. So this has become a time of reflection and resilience—looking at how models can change and how art and artists can still connect in different ways. With that in mind, we've been cooking up some new projects which are still in the very early stages. Without saying too much at this point one of them involves some of my favourite things—art, monsters, myth & history—so I am very excited to see how it unfolds.

Photo by Neyna Rahamdani for TEDxUBUD

What are you (un)secretly good at?

I originally trained as a theatre designer but realised I'd never learnt how to paint. So a couple of years ago I found some classes to learn the basics and mucked around now and then. But it has only been since this lockdown that I have established a regular practice and have felt myself developing as a painter. I have been working on a series of studies to explore different styles and colours—it been wonderful seeing what works and what doesn't. If you want to have at my look at my experiments see my IG @summa_. It has also been a great time for exploring other artists’ work and making connections online. I have found a lot of forums for artists gathering together and learning from each other which has been brilliant. A special shout out to Nicolás Uribe (@nicolasuribe) for his insanely brilliant art and daily videos. At the moment I'm totally fangirling over the works of Colleen Barry (@colleenbarryart). If I ever get a chance to attend a workshop with either of these artists I'll be one happy woman!

How did you start curating?

I started curating in non-traditional spaces—clubs, bars, restaurants—in my early 20s. My focus back then was on emerging and street artists*, and I'll always be grateful to the people who allowed me to take over their spaces. I believe art can and should exist outside white cubes, that art should be where people are. But alternative spaces don't work for all art forms, so these early exhibitions led to me curate exhibitions for major festivals and in more traditional gallery spaces over time. My curatorial work in the visual arts morphed into programming music, performing arts and even a writers festival—I programmed the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival programs 2013-15, which is how I landed in Bali. What I am most excited by is the intersection between different art forms and how when they come together they can create little moments of magic.

*Side note: after working with street artists in Australia, a dream came true here in Bali when Belgium street artist ROA came to Rumah Sanur and did a piece on our walls. I had stalked ROA's work all over Europe so I’m still pinching myself one of his works is on our walls.

How do you curate?

Curating is all about connections, most importantly the connection with artists—it is still the thing I adore most about it, working with and watching artists grow.

Curators need to have an understanding and respect for artists—their background, art form and the stories they are telling. If an artist in return trusts the curator's vision for their work and the exhibition, good things can happen.

Curating groups show can also be about understanding how different artists' can work together, how to create a cohesive exhibition that doesn't feel disjointed visually or thematically. Again, this comes back to understanding an artist's style and voice. But curating is also about connections to communities, spaces, festivals, buyers, sponsors, funding agencies, media, and arts writers. A lot goes into making an exhibition successful, far more than simply hanging works on walls. A good curator knows how to make all these connections work or can bring in the right people to make them happen.

Photo by Suki Zoe, Gelombang by Made griyawan Exhibition for john Hardy Jewelry

Do you have some tips for upcoming curators?

I am stealing some advice a mentor once passed onto me, but I think it is still relevant for all curators and they are the three Rs.

Relationships – know the artists, art spaces, and galleries you want to work with and develop those relationships. Go to artist studios, attend art exhibitions and artists talks. Remember relationships take time, but if you show up they will happen.

Research – a curator must always be researching—new artists, new works, and ways of presenting contemporary ideas that will resonate with an audience. But equally important is knowing your art history—limitless resources exist online so there is no excuse not to do your research.

Relentless – the final ‘R’. Curators must be relentless. Being a curator is not a 9-5 job, it’s a way of being—constantly searching, piecing art, and works together.

To be a good curator you have to be part-composer, part-mad scientist and above all be a relentless collector of people, ideas and things.

How does the curation process happen in the COVID-19 era?

This is a big question that I think everyone is still trying to work out. There is no issue in creating connections and ideas for exhibitions at the moment. We are all connecting via Zoom, IG Live, or whatever platform you like to use. I think the big question comes in the delivery of these ideas. Online exhibitions and digitally generated walkthroughs can go so far, but there is nothing like seeing the artwork in real life. For me something is still lost in the digital realm—I love to walk around sculptures and get up close to paintings to see the texture. Also missing from online is the other people. Art is about an individual's experience in the artwork, but it is also about a collective experience—when people gather in RL to appreciate art.

Where do you see it all going? Meaning, the future of events in the time of a pandemic…

Again I don't think anyone quite knows the answer to this as none of us knows how long this pandemic will go on for. But for the time being, I think we'll see more experiments with online viewings or exhibitions and events with restricted numbers. For galleries, this is not such a hard thing, but for a lot of other art forms like music and performing arts it is hard to create sustainable events with only a fraction of the ticket-buying audience. I think we are all hoping there is a magic bullet that will solve this crisis but no one knows if and when this will happen. What I do know is that humans are creative and resilient beings and whatever happens I am sure we will continue to make art and share it, although I can't wait for the day we can all do that together again.

Thank you, Summa!

Make a Scene! X Cosa Design & Decor

Elami was very happy to play a small role in uniting the amazing talents of Make a Scene! and Cosa Design & Decor for a special event.

Cosa creates incredible floral designs primarily for weddings in Bali and Jakarta and their work has been featured in Martha Stewart and Junebug Weddings. Despite not being Bali-centric in terms of design, they gamely agreed to combine with Make a Scene! to realize an incredible range of Bali-inspired table centerpieces and floral arrangements with woven coconut leaf components by Make a Scene!.

Using local Balinese flowers and the idea of a modern offering, they created three different centerpiece designs.

Make a Scene! also created a series of photo backdrops for guests to enjoy during the event, including incredibly alive dragons.

A pair of butterfly wings to embrace a couple.

And a fan paired with two woven umbrellas. All woven by hand and biodegradable!

The Elementals Dinner, April 5 2019

We will let our The Dinner Series curator and host of The Elementals Dinner, Maya Kerthyasa, summarize this magical night:

“When we started The Dinner Series one of the first things we wanted to do was take people back to the Bali we grew up in. So, last night Melati Gaymans and the Elami and Co girls brought Bukit Campuhan and the river Wos to the verandah of my little cottage, my grandmother and I prepared some of our favourite Balinese dishes, Rudi and Bawa from Akademi Bar at Katamama had infused araks and local-ingredient cocktails on the pour, and then we jumped in a time machine, rewound 20 years and watched a frog dance in the garden. My Papa, Tjok Ibah shared some anecdotes about his life growing up and Balinese culture going forward. And in true Bali style, it rained right up until the guests (who were an incredibly special bunch) started arriving at this mostly outdoor event. An especially big thank you to my Niang, Anak Agung Rai, who surprisingly doesn’t have Instagram.”

Flavours and folklore from the power of the elements

This evening was about tapping in to the many bounties of traditional Bali - the flavours, the sounds and the natural environment. Dinner was prepared by Anak Agung Rai, the 90-year-old mother of Tjokorde Raka Kerthyasa and a former palace cook, with the help of her granddaughter, Maya Kerthyasa.

The dinner was held at Maya’s private home on the banks of the Wos River in Campuhan.

We worked with Melati Gaymans to create an incredible ‘edible landscape’ down the center of the table in the shape of the Campuhan Ridge, with the two (male and female) rivers running down each side. If you look closely you can see Pura Gunung Lebah (Campuhan Temple), the old Dutch bridge and the alang alang fields of the ridge. For the rivers we used agar agar, as well as taro leaves for the grasslands of the ridge, and pandanus leaves for the alang alang.

For place cards, we wrote each guest’s name with rice grains.

The menus were hand-lettered by Michellina Suminto on recycled paper to form candle holders for the table.

The food

Anak Agung Rai, or Gung Niang as she’s known around Ubud, cut her teeth in the kitchens of the Puri in the 1940s. She was just a girl when she married Tjokorda Ngurah of Saren Kauh, who taught her much of what she knows about sacred Balinese foods and how to prepare them. Now in her 90s, she continues to cook the way she did in the palace, using wood-fire and completely natural ingredients. “Once you disconnect from nature,” she says, "you lose sense of what truly matters in life.”

Gung Niang’s cooking is lauded across the island and has been studied by chefs, home-cooks and international television crews, alike. There’s something in the sincerity of her food that reconnects the diner to flavours of a bygone era – Balinese food in its truest form. You can taste the land in the leaves and roots she harvests from her garden, there’s a life-force from the animal she butchered with her own hands, and most importantly, in every knife-stroke, and mouthful – there’s a resounding sense of ritual and purpose.

The performance

The house that hosted the dinner was once home to Cristina Formaggia, an Italian dancer who mastered Balinese topeng dance. We invited her former group from Pura Desa Batuan to come and perform in the garden by torchlight.

Watch the video of the night below:

Simple Ways to Make Your Event More Green

Living in Bali, every day we come face to face with the consequences of bad waste management. We've always made a huge effort to make our events as ‘trash free’ as possible. One of those ways is to make sure our attendees don't need to bring or buy the dreaded one-use plastic Aqua bottle. 

We do this by providing each guest something to drink from, like these glasses below from Bali Recycling, and free refills of water using Kopernik's Nazava water filters throughout the venue. 

For past events, we've also given each guest a metal water bottle...

...or provided them with a bamboo cup—freshly cut bamboo gently sanded so it was ‘lip friendly’. 

We've also teamed up with Jenggala Ceramics to do a limited-edition mug for each guest to use at the event and then take home. 

We recommend looking into the Avani line of products, including compostable paper cups for hot drinks and wooden spoons and forks. They go perfectly with the traditional Balinese ingke we use as plates, which are lined with fresh banana leaves. 

If you'd like to work with us to go even more ‘radically green’ for your next event and help save this beautiful island we call home, get in touch!

Designing a Soundtrack for Events

We were commissioned to design a fundraising event—part of a collaboration between a wildlife conservation organization and one of their main private sector partners. Held in an all-bamboo structure, we knew we had to find a sound that would work with the space and keep people engaged without taking over the whole event. We also wanted people to end up dancing by the end of the night. Mission accomplished!

krishna and friends bringing their reggae/folk music to the audience

Music has always been a huge part of any event we are part of designing and we love to work with young, local musicians. Krisna and Friends played two amazing sets of their reggae and folk inspired music; their mix of covers and original songs really kept the audience's attention. Attendees ended up listening to an impromptu jam session from musicians in the audience and finally dancing until well past the time they were supposed to go home.