Abstract
Culture is a key dimension in the history of cities where the design of urban development strategies combines the aim to preserve the wealth of cultural heritage with the search for contemporary progress. Along the centuries, arts and crafts have always occupied an important place in the life of cities because they contribute to preserve local identity and traditions through skills, they provide jobs and contribute to the local economy, and they are a source of interest for cultural tourism. Historically, artisan workshops are to be found in cities, where the high concentration of people and products provides the perfect framework for buying raw materials and selling the final products in markets. Today, workshops have often been substituted by industrializations and those left are increasingly being forced out of the city or to die to leave space to new businesses. What is the place of handicraft today? Is there still a strong linkage between handicraft and places? And what has been the role of public policies in encouraging (or discouraging) this kind of activity in the past century? The article discusses these questions and provides examples taken from the observation of the historical and sociopolitical context of handicrafts in India. The conclusion reflects over handicraft as a marginalized sector with great potential to become a driver of sustainable development in cities.
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Notes
- 1.
Dastkar is a private not-for-profit NGO aimed to support traditional Indian craftspeople in regaining their place in the economic mainstream. Most of Dasktar’s employees are women and village based (http://www.dastkar.org).
- 2.
Chatterjee Ahmedabad is former executive director of National Institute of Design (NID) and honorary president of the Crafts Council of India for over 20 years.
- 3.
According to Cumming and Kaplan (1991:9), the British Crafts Council’s goal is to make the UK the best place to make, see, collect and learn about contemporary craft. In France, the Institut National des Métiers d’Art, which was created in 2010, is a semi-public body focused on the crafts industry, a sector which is believed to have strong growth potential. Italy is also looking into the craft sector and was promoter of the signature of the International Charter of Artistic Craftsmanship in 2010.
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Acknowledgement
A special thanks to those who contributed to this paper: Professor Jyoti Hosagrahar for sharing her knowledge and network of contacts, and for being helpful during the data collection; the NGO “Sustainable Urbanism International” (Bangalore, India) for hosting the research; the UNESCO Chair in Culture, Habitat, and Sustainable Development at Srishti (Bangalore, India) for providing interesting inputs; and the protagonists and actors in the observed case studies who were available for formal interviews, as well as for informal chats.
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Pierantoni, L. (2018). The Heritage Value of the Craft Sector in Fast-Growing Cities. In: Petrillo, A., Bellaviti, P. (eds) Sustainable Urban Development and Globalization. Research for Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61988-0_22
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