Crafting a better future

India's traditional arts and crafts have many takers in the international design world, but what have the artisans got for all their skills? Very little. One important reason for this is the lack of a market orientation "" both the savvy to reach the end consumer and the design sensibility to detect and cater to modern lifestyles.

This is where NID's recent proposal to devise and run a two-year programme for traditional artistes at Orissa's State Institute of Development of Arts and Crafts, comes in. Sirshendu Ghosh, activity chairperson of NID's outreach programmes, says the project "will include everything from process to material to conceptualisation. The focus will be on developing entrepreneurial skills."

NID's involvement with the crafts sector is not new, however. But hitherto it has been more of a top-down approach with students and faculty visiting crafts villages to suggest changes and develop new product lines. "It was almost like we were forcing it on them."

NID's Orissa project is an interesting, bottom-up one, seeking to impart marketing and negotiating skills so that the artists no longer need depend on outside designers, middlemen or NGOs to help them.

Enabling experiences

Government bodies will do what they can, but far south in Kerala we now have a private initiative underway that seeks to "equip, enable and empower" a group of potters that could well turn out to be a role model for such future projects.

Enable Artisan is a brainchild of K B Jinan, an NID-qualified designer who's been working with tribal potters over the past two decades, developing a range of modern lifestyle products "" terracotta tiles, microwave-proof crockery and so on.

Unlike other such projects, Enable Artisans recognises that marginalised artisans have a design sensibility of their own; all they need is some amount of exposure before they come up with products that catch the imagination of the world.

Indeed, the only way to preserve their cultural uniqueness and hand-made aesthetic is for them understand and be involved in the entire cycle, from design to selling.

A two-year programme, it involves teaching a small batch of rural artisans basic computing skills, how to use the Internet and digital camera, negotiate with middlemen and banks, as also travelling to the metros to see how the city-half lives.