Somayeh Bardai oversees the Raana Liaquat Craftsmen’s Colony - RLCC which supports over 20,000 beneficiaries a year and 120 staff members in Shah Faisal Town. This women empowerment organisation houses a school with 750 children, a polyclinic serving 12,000 patients, a vocational training department educating 1000 trainees, a livelihoods department that supports over 250 home based craftswomen and an outreach team that brings awareness to 13000 beneficiaries in the community.
Somayeh's journey in design Intervention began in 1999, Quetta, to document the fading embroideries of Balochistan. She attained her BFA from AUD and further studied Photography at SVA in New York after which Somayeh joined the M.Des at NIFT Delhi. Since returning to Karachi in 2012 Somayeh has taught photography at TIP and IVS, worked with Save the Children and the IKEA foundation to eradicate child labor and empower women in the Cotton fields of Interior Sindh and Punjab, restructured and managed the manufacturing unit and vocational training classes at Behbud Karachi and served as an assistant curator at the Mohatta Palace Museum.
panel
This panel conversation invites participants to move beyond the hype surrounding artificial intelligence and take a more grounded, human-centered look at its real-world implications. Rather than treating AI as an abstract or inevitable force, the discussion explores what it actually means for people whose work is rooted in craft, cultural memory, and place. With a particular focus on artisans in the Global South, the panel examines how creativity is inseparable from community, environment, and livelihood. Panelists will reflect on the opportunities, tensions, and risks AI presents for makers who work with their hands, inherit generational knowledge, and depend on local ecosystems. The conversation aims to slow the narrative down, asking whose futures are being shaped by AI—and how technology can engage more responsibly with craft, culture, and survival.
