About
Every act of making is an act of meaning.
Every act of making is an act of meaning.
Because we are billions of human beings who, through their fears, their joys, their angers, and their loves, live seeking to give a meaning to their existence.
Origins
Background Story
In October 2026, Kyoto will host the inaugural edition of the “Kyoto YouMe Triennale,” a new international event centered on the fusion of art, craft, and design. Titled “MANIFESTO Edition,” the exhibition will take place from October 9 to 18 at various locations throughout Kyoto, including the historic Shoseien Garden on the grounds of Higashi Hongan-ji Temple.
This triennial was established with the aim of building a permanent platform for dialogue across cultures, disciplines, and generations. Held every three years, the event brings together artists, designers, artisans, curators, institutions, and companies to explore the contemporary value of “craftsmanship” as an expression of knowledge, identity, and innovation
The impetus for this collaboration came from a meeting between Liberty & Co. and Marusen Co., Ltd. during the “Open Studio” initiative at DESIGN WEEK KYOTO. To mark their shared 150th anniversary, the two companies collaborated to create a limited-edition furoshiki featuring William Morris’s masterpiece *The Strawberry Thief* and the new design *Floral Muse* printed on chirimen silk, which was unveiled to the world at the UK Pavilion during the Osaka-Kansai World Exposition.
Founded in 1875 by Arthur Rasenby Liberty, the prestigious British brand Liberty has been deeply captivated by Japanese textiles since its very inception; the founder’s own journey across the Atlantic in search of Japanese fabrics lies at the origin of Liberty’s aesthetic sensibility. Marusen, based in Iwataki, Yosano-cho, Kyoto, is a long-established manufacturer of Tango chirimen founded in the same year, 1875. Its silk fabrics, characterized by the “shibo” texture on the fabric’s surface created by heavily twisted weft threads, feature deep and vivid colors.
Through repeated encounters and dialogue at the Open Studio – which opens Kyoto’s craftsmanship scene to the world – a new meaning of “creation” was born when these two 150-year histories intersected. The Kyōto YouMe Triennale is an initiative to nurture this small encounter into a lasting platform that connects creators from around the world. In 2026, we hope to begin by creating a space for encounters through exhibitions, forums, and study tours at Shōsei-en Garden.
A New International Cultural Infrastructure
With Manifesto Edition, the Kyōto YouMe Triennale launches a project designed to grow and consolidate over time: an international network founded on dialogue between those who create, those who preserve knowledge and those who imagine new scenarios. Following Kyoto, the project foresees a gradual international expansion through collaborations with institutions and creative communities in Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia, the Middle East and other regions of the world. Every three years, Kyoto will become a meeting place for a global community that recognises art, craft and design not only as tools of production, but as essential forms of connection, culture and future-making.
YouMe: a time for encounters between people, cultures and ideas
The name YouMe combines two concepts: “you & me” and yume, the Japanese word for dream. The Triennale is conceived as a moment of encounter, a shared time in which people from different countries and fields can exchange ideas about the future of creativity. The manifesto of the Kyōto YouMe Triennale starts from a reflection: art, craft and design are not alternatives to industry, but different expressions of the same human impulse to create meaning through materials and purposeful connections. In an era defined by increasing digitalisation and artificial intelligence, the event proposes renewed attention to the human value of making: the time devoted to creation, relationships between people, transmitted knowledge, imperfection and the uniqueness of manual processes. The traditional opposition between tradition and innovation, local and global, craft and industry, art and design are being overcome. Kyoto becomes the symbolic place for this reflection: a city where historical memory and contemporary research have coexisted for centuries, and where the act of creating still preserves a strong cultural and social dimension, and welcomes invention.
Manifesto
A text by
Alessandro Biamonti
Curator, Edition ‘Manifesto’
In this age of advancing AI, we must pause and take a deep, collective breath, as if the whole planet is doing so with us. We need to re-examine the very meaning of existence. What lies beyond our chain of joy, fear, anxiety and heartbreak?
This is an invitation to a great challenge, one with no right or wrong answers. Sometimes it is easier not to ask, like a bird in a cage, swaying between seed and water. Outside, there may be hundreds of dangerous predators. But we may also be afraid to discover there are forests to build nests in, and places to ride the wind on a long journey.
Regardless of what we choose to see or who we are, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, and a warm spring always follows a cold winter.
Here, quality is not about perfect products. It is the silent, unspoken value that lives in our relationships and in the creative process itself — beyond the cold logic of profit. We choose Kyoto because it is a place where deep history and bold modernity intersect: the act of making is imbued with a soul, and its heritage is still breathing.
International curators
An international team of curators from the United Kingdom, Italy, India, Qatar, and Japan has come together to gather art, crafts, and design from their respective countries and design a space for exhibition and dialogue. Through the intersection of diverse cultural backgrounds and perspectives, we will reexamine the meaning of “making” from multiple angles and work together to take the first step toward new forms of co-creation.
