Look at Potential, not the Product
Traditional Creative Industry | An Abstract which was written for a proposed paper.
The paper and the supporting case studies of work done in
the ‘Indian handicraft sector’ (the term which will be re interpreted later by
the author) envisions a way forward for the sector’s future sustenance.
To begin with it rewinds briefly to the pre and post Gandhian thought of an industrial containment of Indian maker of things (professional skill/wrutti) who supported the needs of customers indigenously, locally and traditionally. In the introduction it describes the present scenario of Govt. and corporate sector intervention to scale up the handicraft business through schemes, etc and its affects at a micro and macro level.
Hand-Craft in India in the past has been an industry
which was indigenous and catered to localized needs. Today by calling it craft it is being placed in a glorified
situation, thereby isolating it and non inclusive in the mainstream of
manufacturing business.
The change with industrial and globalization, has been
inevitable and will be in the future, therefore reinterpreting and
repositioning of craft in India in the truly modern sense will set the course
for its sustainability. When one says craft, it binds culture, livelihood, design
and local people sustaining on it today. Craft in India has been wrutti
(trade) based: an acumen of the traditional, practiced typically by Vishwakarma families
making essentials for rituals and utilitarian practiced by other trade
communities for day to day use. Their artifacts and products had and still have
a strong sense of aesthetics, manufacturing process and functionality.
It is essentially about, ‘craft’ reinterpreted as
‘Traditional Creative Industry’. The tacit and inherited knowledge and acumen
of the young talented human resource belonging to this community, their future
engagement with the new market can be shown by design, the possibilities of
lateral connect between new markets, technologies and the inherited acumen. To illustrate an example, the traditional
painted dolls and furniture makers of Kinhal and Gokak in Karnataka and Nirmal
in Telangana in India, a community called Chitragars (artists) from the pre Vijayanagara empire period have been practising artisans
even today. Their inborn artistic sensibilities channeled to present creative
technology industry like the animation industry media would be meaningful. In
similar trail, sandal wood products and fashion industry, bamboo products which
were traditionally livelihood utilities as your home based organizers with
material alternatives. Thus, the emphasis
on the ‘potential’ of the practicing communities rather than the ‘product’ to
cast its future sustenance through other market and technology centric feasible
directions and connects. This would bring in quality and value to the products conceived
in the future with the approach of ‘letting people who are good at it, make
it’. And the attributes of their acumen for the making would be, passed on tacit and learnt knowledge,
the craftness of interpreting material manipulation, and making and the
inherent sensibilities of aesthetic. Its about taking the sector into its next
paradigm through the Young Artisan of the present and future.
First draft written in Dec 2011.
