WORLD CRAFTS COUNCIL

I took over as President of the World Crafts Council on 1st January 2009. It was indeed a proud moment for my country and the Crafts Council of India. As I said at the 16th General Assembly of WCC on assuming charge, my main focus would be on crafts advocacy by taking the cause of crafts and craftsmen to governments, policy makers and the business community. I would also strive to ensure that crafts and craftspersons are recognised as an integral part of the mainstream of economic, social life.

Based on this commitment, I shared with you at the General Assembly my 5-point programme under the headings of(a) Membership, (b) Marketing, Trade Exhibitions, Tourism and Craft; (c) Education – Workshops and Training Schools, (d) Communication – Advocacy, Networking and Media and (e) Fund raising. I have already started work on many of these areas through the dream teams. We focussed on getting the WCC website organised and have already changed the web design. Hopefully, we should be online in about a week.

I have also been in communication with different regions of WCC, particularly Africa and Latin America, to get more members into the organisation and to expand our membership base. In this connection, may I have the names of two members from each region who, being in touch with ground realities, will be a source of great help to me and be a part of my dream teams!

I visited Chile last month and met WCC past president Celina in Santiago. I dropped in at the WCC office and got some important papers back. Visiting 3 or 4 craft centres and meeting and interacting with craftspeople was an enriching and meaningful experience, apart from revealing the common problem areas of Chilean and Indian artisans.

We have also started discussions with Austrian authorities on holding an exposition of African crafts in Austria later this year. Other plans are also on the anvil. Cuba has asked India to be the partner country in the Craft Exposition to be held in Havana. There is going to be an exposition of Indian Handicrafts in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 5th to 15th November 2009. We hope that this exposition could extend to Chile and at least one other country in Latin America. I was able to talk to the President of Chile about this. She is appreciative of this idea and has assured that she would look into this. Parallelly, I am also trying to see if other Latin American countries could join this exposition in Argentina. If it works out, then the possibility of having the Latin America Assembly of WCC around that time could also be explored.

In the realm of education, I am happy to report that our focus on craft education in schools is taking off. We have made arrangements with Padma Sehsadri Bala Bhavan, a leading school in Chennai, to start craft education for a class of 132 students with 6 traditional craftsmen acting as resource persons. The education programme is going to be introduced in three major cities like Delhi,Bangalore and Hyderabad. A sponsor has come forward to sponsor three schools in Hyderabad. Though starting small as a 3-day programme initially, this will eventually become a weekly programme and sensitize children to our heritage and the intrinsic value of handicrafts.

One area that is taking considerable time is ascertaining the exact location where WCC has been registered. After a lot of efforts by our members, pointers are now emerging that WCC might have been registered in Switzerland. We are trying to get the registration certificate from Switzerland. Our Embassy has offered to help us in this matter. I hope it will materialise soon.

In the area of advocacy, I have met with senior members of the Confederation of Indian Industry in regard to raising the status of crafts as an industry. I strongly feel that the reach of crafts should go further. We are in the process of negotiating with the Tourism Ministry and the ICICI Foundation to bring our dream of Craft-Tourism linkage into reality.

I must end my communiqué with the “Selvedged Voices: Women’s Narrative Textiles from Chile and India” exhibition which was held in Chennai from 20th to 22nd March 2009, which was organised by CII, the Crafts Council of India and the Honorary Consul of Chile in Chennai. It was a celebration of the embroidery skills used by Chilean and Indian women artisans to tell stories. WCC past president Celina was present at the exhibition and played a major role in getting the embroidered tapestries or “Arpillerias” to the exhibition. The President of Chile, Dr. Michelle Bachelet Jeria inaugurated the exhibition and went back with wonderful memories of this craft event.