The Challenge: The Alto Vale do Ribeira region — home to municipalities such as Apiaí and Itaoca, roughly 330 km from São Paulo — holds a remarkable cultural heritage rooted in Indigenous, African, and European traditions, visible in its craft techniques, tamanco fandango dance, local cuisine, and oral folklore. For centuries, ceramic work was central to everyday life and trade in the region, passed down from generation to generation.
Today, however, fewer than 25 active ceramic artisans remain across both municipalities, and the risk of losing this ancestral knowledge is very real. Meanwhile, children and young people are growing up with little connection to the cultural identity of their own territory, while elders carry precious memories that need to be heard before they fade.
Our Solution: Selected from more than 600 entries submitted to the open call of the São Paulo State Secretariat of Culture, Creative Economy and Creative Industries, Artesanato Identitário do Alto Vale do Ribeira is born from a partnership between Garimpo de Soluções and Grupo Arte Looze with a clear purpose: to equip top-tier artisans with an authentic iconographic repertoire that differentiates their products and increases their market value.
The project’s conception, iconography, and editorial work were carried out in partnership with Garimpo de Soluções. This is an investment in the creative economy and in the territorial identity of the region — not charity, but recognition that these master craftspeople have the skill, the talent, and something meaningful to offer the world. To that end, the project conducts an iconographic survey of the most representative symbols of everyday regional life, transformed into graphic icons that serve as the foundation for workshops with the artisans, as well as sessions with children, elders, and artists from different disciplines.
All of these experiences are compiled into a book — distributed free of charge to schools, libraries, artisans, and institutions — that brings together the iconography, the pieces created, and the memories gathered from the elders. The project will run from May to November 2026. Making craft the mirror and the pride of the Vale do Ribeira — and an ever stronger source of income for those who produce it.