Karatasi Studio
Story-led design, handmade materials and creative experimentation.
Karatasi Studio is a research-led creative space focused on material experimentation, storytelling systems, and the development of ideas into new forms of cultural and educational practice.
Karatasi Studio is a space where artists, educators, organisations, and community groups explore how stories are shaped through physical materials, including handmade paper and natural fibres.
At its core, Karatasi Studio is concerned with how meaning is carried not only through words but also through the materials that hold them. Handmade paper is not only a material in this work, but a way of thinking about how stories are carried, shared, and remembered.
Karatasi Studio is the research and creative development space within the Karatasi ecosystem. It focuses on how stories are explored, tested, and translated into material form through experimentation, rather than finished production.
How We Do It
Artists, educators, organisations and community groups working with story, learning and creative practice.
Karatasi studio offers artists a space to experiment with handmade paper as part of their creative practice. This may include testing ideas, prototyping work, developing mixed-media pieces, or exploring how handmade materials can support visual storytelling.
This is a space for experimentation, material research, and creative testing rather than final production.
Working With Organisations and Communities
Karatasi Studio works with organisations, schools, and community groups seeking creative materials aligned with sustainability, culture, and imagination.
This work focuses on collaboration, prototyping ideas, and exploring how storytelling and material practice can support learning, reflection, and engagement.
Karatasi Studio operates as a regenerative creative practice. Handmade paper is used not only as a material, but as a framework for thinking about resource use, care, and long-term value.
The studio supports artists and organisations while contributing to wider storytelling and community work. Materials, stories, and people are understood as interconnected, with each supporting the other.
Karatasi Studio sits within the wider Karatasi ecosystem as a development and research space, feeding into both Karatasi Collective and Yuniya CIC through experimentation, prototyping, and material exploration.
Paper
All paper is made using natural and recovered fibres, including banana fibre, pineapple leaf fibre, and elephant grass. These fibres are hand-pulped, formed into sheets, and dried naturally, without coatings or chemical treatments, allowing the fibre's texture, tone, and character to remain visible.
Each sheet is unique. Variations in weight, surface, and colour are understood as part of the material’s identity rather than imperfections to be removed. These variations shape how each story is experienced.
This approach is part of a wider research practice into how material processes shape storytelling, memory, and meaning.
