The Young Talent Program encompasses various actions to promote emerging talent, as well as the generational renewal of the crafts sector in Catalonia.
This program is being promoted within the framework of the Artesania Catalunya –CCAM strategic plan, the objective of which is to implement tools to promote young talent.
The Young Talent Program developed different actions:
like the Crafts NOW and the Crafts TECH projects, as well as communication measures.
1. Crafts TECH: a project based in digital manufacturing developed together with the Fab Lab Barcelona and in the framework of its Distributed Design Platform program that acts as an exchange hub within the European movement to promote the role of emerging artisans and designers as part of this new digital world. In this seminar different professionals showed how the sharing of knowledge encourages evolution and allows us to find local solutions to global problems, while it conditions the crafts practice itself as a catalyst that tirelessly updates it over the years. As the new craft crosses disciplinary boundaries and places us in a landscape where research is key to future growth.
2. Crafts NOW: a series of seminars dedicated to innovation, which are a meeting point for young professionals and students in the craft sector to share knowledge and debates. A session in which a dialogue is established around research, search, and innovation in crafts, from the perspective of creativity, transversality, and business.
3. Communication: an extensive and continuous communication work to generate “engagement” with this young audience.
Resources needed
80.000€ (20.000 per year).
3 employees of the institution + external collaborators.
Evidence of success
1. 110% increase in the registration of young crafts people in the official database.
2. Growth rate of 270% in 2020 compared to 2019 (in part thanks to virtuality due to the pandemic).
3. Total views of the practice in different platforms: 10,033.
4. Inclusion of new more sectorized press media for this community of young people and promotion of the IG social network as a reference for this more contemporary and trend-setting craft @artesaniacat: https://www.instagram.com/artesaniacat/
Difficulties encountered
Change the perception of crafts in the circuits of younger creatives.
We realized that this community of young creatives already used crafts, but they did not identify with the artisan concept.
Potential for learning or transfer
The practice is easily transferable to any region or country considering that all countries have communities of creative young people that are well linked through associations or the Art and Design training centres themselves. These disciplines have clear potential synergies with the artisan trades and with their academic and / or professional sector.
Examples of scalable actions from this practice:
• Conference on innovation in procedures, tools, and materials.
• Introductory trainings to the entrepreneurship: Master classes on entrepreneurship, financing, and project sustainability.
• Knowledge exchange sessions of different disciplines linked to the crafts world.
Tags: Art, Business cycle, Cultural heritage, Culture, Design, Digitalisation, Sharing ideas, SME, Training, Youth
