By Alliance President Terry Gips
A short but strategic, genuine and charismatic dynamo and her team are leading the way to bringing the magnificent work of thousands of Indigenous artisans from their rainforest and remote village homes to the rest of the world. She has scaled artistic sustainability to a level beyond my wildest imagination while meeting the needs of some of the lowest income artists in the world.
Thanks to the efforts of Rebecca Hui and her Rurban team, the colorful, unique work of these artisans is now being made available for purchase in top galleries in the US and Europe, as well as through a beautiful online platform. “Creatives breathe life into the world. I build structures that enable them to do so,” as Hui explains.
Hui’s Rurban has developed extensive product partnerships with Patagonia, Chanel Foundation, Cartier Women’s Initiative, NOAH, A24, REI, 3.1 Philip Lim, amongst others. It has been featured in HYPEBEAST, Vogue Business 100, PBS Arts, Forbes Under 30 and MIT Technology Review.
A Chance Encounter at the Skoll World Forum
I was introduced to Rebecca by Ruby Yip from the Asian-American Foundation during lunch at the Skoll World Forum. We immediately jumped into the deepest of discussions about our personal and professional lives. I was totally captivated as she shared her own story and the creation of what is now known as Rurban.
I was struck that an MIT Urban Design and Planning undergrad and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business MBA would use her degrees to trek to the most remote villages around the world to support the artisans living there. Perhaps it makes sense that this former cartographer-activist had worked with rural communities facing challenging transitions in agriculture, water and climate.
Hui began her journey as a Fulbright Scholar and National Geographic Explorer mapping human-animal coexistence in India. She’s built projects utilizing satellite data to equip communities and governments to be more disaster resilient. She’s also devised “The Rurban” (rural-urban) mapping policy for the Government of India and The World Bank to expand water and infrastructure planning for 44,000 villages.
Hui was a recipient of the 2021 Cartier Women’s Initiative, which honors and supports female entrepreneurs and their projects with a $100,000 prize. She uses her watercolors in children’s books like Old Enough to Make a Difference about social entrepreneurship, distributed through Abrams.
The Painful Shift From Roots Studio to Rurban
I was deeply disturbed as she shared how her Roots Studio was recently taken to court by a venture capital firm (which I call Vulture Capitalists) in Canada. The VC had purchased a business with “Roots” in its name and somehow was allowed to trademark it.
The VC sadly refused to work out any agreement and threatened major legal action against Roots Studio if it didn’t change its name in 30 days. Wow! This was all unfolding while Rebecca was calmly talking to me at lunch. It’s sad for me that such a profound word from nature can be captured and controlled by anyone, much less a vulture capitalist.
While in total shock and disbelief, Rebecca and her team took on the monumental task of coming up with a new name and completely rebranding their entire global effort. Overcoming such a setback is truly inspiring and a significant testament to an incredibly empowered Asian American woman and her team working for the benefit of so many artists.
Rebecca stands tall for me as a towering shero whose smile and energy are infectious and illuminating our world with possibilities.
Rebecca’s Path to Rurban
In an interview with Cultured, Hui shared, “I’ve been working with Indigenous and minority communities globally for the last decade with a focus on Asia. Often when people think about rural communities, they think about poverty, lack of infrastructure and poor education. However, what I saw were highly creative and bold individuals.
“But with unstable farming income, villagers leave their communities to become migrant laborers in cities, obscuring their artistic potential and voice. Most communities are often discriminated against in the mainland, and they lose that confidence in their voice and a piece of their identity.
“Simultaneously, the urban world finds itself craving sustainability, community and provenance. No wonder there is such a huge rise in organic hippie labels. Yet without the packaging, these are values that Indigenous communities have held for generations. Why not bring these communities to be contributors for these collaborations?
“Cultural loss cannot be prevented simply from anthropological documentation. We have to see culture as dynamically held by communities with evolving needs and values and create solutions to evolve with those needs. Roots Studio forms consensual and financially sustainable bridges between communities and global fashion to create more beauty and wonder.
“But, these communities aren’t static and should not be held in nostalgia. The in-between of the urban and rural is the “rurban” — not suburbia, but villages meeting glassy buildings. The rurban, to me, is the least understood by urban planners, yet it encompasses the transformation that many villages are undergoing.”
Honoring and Compensating Indigenous Women Artisans
The significance of Rurban’s work was well-captured by Cultured:
“As climate change and the Internet-driven market economy force Indigenous groups to migrate to big cities, the time-honored crafts by women artisans lack a financially sustainable outlet.
“Enter Roots Studio [now renamed as Rurban], Rebecca Hui’s New York-based start-up that aims to develop the ‘prosperous village’, where traditional designs are appropriately valued commercially.
“Her goal? Ending the exploitative cycle of Western cultural appropriation, and instead returning the proper respect and credit to Indigenous makers.”
The Rurban website explains that it “is revolutionizing the cultural arts exchange landscape by creating the world’s most equitable digital marketplace for Indigenous creativity.
“As the bridge between ancestral artistry and contemporary design, we empower cultural communities to protect, monetize, and share their heritage on their own terms while building the world’s first comprehensive infrastructure for scaling this impact globally.”
Hui’s Take on Cultural Appropriation
Rurban has been described by The Business of Fashion as, “The Antidote to Cultural Appropriation.” Hui has highly evolved perspectives on this topic:
“We are in a culture full of accusation with little space for redemption. I have felt all the pain in my heart, too. But avoiding the discussion only ensures that appropriation will take place and that the world will succumb to a dominant and ultimately boring aesthetic.
“Transposing a pattern drawn by an artist in rural India onto a garment designed in downtown Manhattan isn’t necessarily appropriation. Many heritage artists are eager to share their art with the world. And they are eager for the income, international exposure and design exchange to sustain their practice.
“True cultural appropriation is founded on power imbalances from a history of the lack of authorship, consent and compensation. If we can create a two-way bridge with those elements, we can pave a way to share cultures more equitably and beautifully. Rather than exploitation, design and fashion can once again be a form of diplomacy and a megaphone for inspiration and global style.”
Rurban’s Astounding Accomplishments Benefitting Artisans
As its website points out, “Rurban works with the creative unseen communities rich in cultural heritage around the world to digitize their cultural works as IP [intellectual property] into an online library for licensing.
“Through years of consistent heart, trust-building, and steady operations, we build two-way bridges between artists and the global market by providing respect, reciprocity, and remuneration.”
I hope you’ll check out their website which invites viewers to “discover our curated archive of rare art, stories, and handcrafts meticulously created by master artisans across the world.”
For more than a decade, Rurban “has been creating strategic alliances with brands and master artisans, co-developing more than 5 million authentic, culturally-rich products.” I am truly blown away that such a scale is even possible.
Equally astounding, the Rurban Library now houses “the world’s largest digital collection of endangered cultural art forms, with 20,000+ unique designs available for IP licensing, traceable back to every artist.”
Three Impactful Approaches Rurban Utilizes
- Sharing Expertise in Workshops – The Rurban team is international with decades of expertise in high design, grassroots organizing and retail expertise. They share their knowledge with their partner artisan communities through quarterly workshops in pattern development, digital literacy, and financial management – building sustainable skills and independence.
- Alignment with the UN’s Sustainability Goal 11 – Rurban is a great example of a business deliberately fulfilling the UN’s goal, “making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. They implement it by creating “economic alternatives that honor traditional lifestyles” and “reducing the need for migration.” At the same time, they’re “supporting sustainable lifestyles while preserving cultural richness.”
- Cutting-edge compensation for communities, livelihoods, biodiversity and lands – Rurban has created a unique partnership model that generates revenue averaging 5x the original selling price for artists. Furthermore, its “profit split structure directs 85% to a community dividend fund and 15% to highly participating artists.” Equally amazing, the community dividend fund supports Indigenous livelihoods protecting nearly a million acres (350,000 hectares) of biodiverse forests and lands.
The Significant Nexus of Art and Sustainability
Who would have ever thought a chance lunch encounter would open me (and now I hope you) to a world where the long-hidden art of Indigenous women can touch and beautify our daily lives? Rebecca is a bold trailblazer who has created a model of what the Alliance for Sustainability calls S.H.E. Kindness, embodying sustainability, health, equity and kindness.