Two Cebu-based Good Design Award Philippines 2026 winners team up on a DIY kit that turns puso weaving into something anyone can learn.
Making Space and ANTHILL Fabric Gallery have joined forces on a special edition of the Make-A-Puso DIY Kit, pairing Making Space’s work preserving the traditional Cebuano puso weaving craft with ANTHILL’s handwoven textiles.
The pairing makes sense on paper and in practice. Both organizations are Cebu-based, both were recently recognized at the Good Design Award Philippines 2026, and both build their work around the same idea: craft and culture are worth protecting, but only if people can still get their hands on them.
“Apart from the GDA design recognition and Cebuano roots, both organisations share the same values on our appreciation and preservation for craft, culture and communal making. The puso kit is a good representation of all that and Cebuano ingenuity,” ANTHILL founder Anya Lim says.
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Making Space picked up the GDA recognition in the Object Making category for the Make-A-Puso Kit’s approach to cultural preservation through hands-on workshops. ANTHILL earned a Red Award in Systems and Service Design for its Zero Waste Textile Circular Solution, a system built to cut textile waste while creating something useful for people and the planet.
The two projects tackle different problems, but they land on the same design principle: malasakit, or empathy. ANTHILL’s zero-waste textile practice and the puso itself both come from the same instinct. The puso is already a study in traditional resourcefulness, and the kit’s use of lukay, or young coconut leaves, as packaging is a small but pointed reminder of how Filipino communities have long made do with what’s around them.
That’s really what this collaboration argues for: not preserving Cebuano craft by freezing it in place, but keeping it alive by letting it evolve. Both organizations push back on the idea that protecting a tradition means leaving it untouched. A living tradition, in their view, can shift and adapt without losing what makes it Cebuano.
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For Making Space, the kit is one piece of a bigger effort to make cultural knowledge easier to reach, particularly for younger Cebuanos and visitors who want more than the usual tourist checklist. For ANTHILL, it fits a broader mission of cultural continuity, keeping traditional craft and materials knowledge alive through practice, community, and new ways of applying them.
Neither organization is treating this as a one-off. Both frame it as an early step toward more collaboration between Cebu’s creative organizations, the kind that produces work distinctly rooted in the city while still reaching people beyond it. The invitation, at its core, is simple: don’t just admire the weave from a distance. Learn it, understand the material, and pass the story along.
The special Making Space x ANTHILL Fabric Gallery Make-A-Puso Kits are on display at NAYON NATIN from September 4 to 30, 2026, R2 Level, Power Plant Mall, beside the Common Room.
