Prompt Weaving: Engaging Song Brocade through Generative Media and Craft Participation

Prompt Weaving is a practice-based research project exploring the potential of generative AI for interpreting traditional textile patterns, enabling creative participation, and supporting design prototyping through the case of Song Brocade. Drawing on its principles of symmetry, repetition, rhythm, and structural organisation, the project develops a “Composition-First” prompting framework that translates underlying compositional logic into a generative process for image creation, iterative design, and creative exploration. The practice investigates how generative AI can lower barriers to understanding and engaging with Song Brocade, enabling non-specialists and emerging designers to explore its visual and structural principles more intuitively. In doing so, it proposes new possibilities for intangible cultural heritage interpretation, design education, and participatory creative practice. The approach also demonstrates potential for contemporary pattern innovation, the repurposing of small-scale jacquard looms, and the translation of cultural resources into tangible creative outcomes.

Prompt Weaving was selected as a Good Practice Case under the UNESCO Call for Good Practice Cases: “When AI Meets Design”, recognising its relevant contribution to the responsible, culturally relevant, and people-centred application of AI and design.