PRESERVATION OF TRADITIONAL SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

Crafts Development Centre
PIDT works to invigorate local crafts skills as viable livelihood options. PIDT both encourages sale in local markets and provides access to its collective marketing outlet, Sanhati Bipani, for artisans whose design skills are beyond local needs. This allows for the maintenance of self-supplying communities in addition to product line diversification for external sales. Craft areas supported include ceramics, terracotta, bamboo craft, and handloom.

Various specialized handlooms including Chittaranjan, Manipuri, Frame, Hobby, Swedish, and Tara, are tested for efficiency.	Due to deforestation in many tribal areas of the country Bamboo plantation is gaining momentum.

Sanhati Bipani, a marketing network to support an alternative lifestyle…
Sanhati Bipani, which means “collective selling,” is both a store and a concept for making available daily needs products which support an alternative lifestyle. Sanhati Bipani sells handicrafts, handlooms, books on development, health foods and grains, organic produce, and home-made jams and pickles. Sanhati Bipani has two retail outlets, at PIDT’s Lokshala campus, in Madhupur, Jharkhand and at Bolpur near Santiniketan in West Bengal. Sanhati Bipani has done significant work in Eastern India spreading demand for environmentally friendly production and handicrafts. Raw materials and items are supplied by PIDT and by other members of the increasing network of producers from the voluntary sector, women’s groups, crafts groups, and individual artisans.

New concept terracotta products such as filler blocks for concrete work and decorative tiles for building façades are being tried.	Artistic ceramic products are also being produced to increase the potters income possibility.

In addition to serving as a market base, Sanhati Bipani organises various workshops and trainings on issues of production and marketing for the producers. One of the recent objectives is to heighten the customer to producer interface.

Another new dimension of Sanhati Bipani currently being undertaken is the establishment of a Tribal and Rural Crafts Museum and a Gallery of Modern Art to promote tribal and young contemporary artists. Back