Policy recommendations for crafts-led innovation

Curated by members of ekip, this list highlights selected policy recommendations related to crafts-led innovation.

Policy recommendations for crafts-led innovation

Crafts-led innovation involves harnessing artistic and traditional craft skills, knowledge, and techniques to develop new ideas, products, or services. Crafts such as weaving, pottery, wood carving, leatherworking, and glassblowing play a key role in frugal innovation—creating high-quality solutions that maximize value at minimal cost. By leveraging resource constraints, traditional crafts contribute to cost-effective, sustainable solutions while preserving cultural heritage. Conversely, innovation enhances the preservation and societal value of traditional crafts. Below is a selection of policy recommendations related to crafts-led innovation.

Craft and Industrial Geographical Indication (CIGI) Regulation

This Regulation from the European Commission establishes a single unified EU title for the protection of craft and industrial product names across all EU countries. This title is granted to products originating from specific places or regions, possessing qualities, reputation, or characteristics essentially linked to their geographical origin, and involving at least one production step in that area. The Regulation seeks to retain unique skills and traditional know-how that might otherwise disappear, particularly in Europe’s rural and less developed regions.

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Innovation through craft: Opportunities for growth

This report by the UK Crafts Council demonstrates that craft skills and knowledge have a strong economic impact and significant potential to drive further growth and innovation in other sectors. It holds several recommendations and actions ekip is interested in, including “Brokering and co-ordinating business-to-business collaborations between craft experts and businesses from other sectors.”

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Métiers de la main, métiers de demain : une nouvelle stratégie nationale en faveur des métiers d’art

Supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of the Economy, this resource (translation: Handicrafts, crafts of tomorrow: a new national strategy in favor of artistic crafts) holds a five-axis strategy in favor of crafts in France. In particular, ekip is interested  in axis 3 which focuses on: “Anchoring craft professions at the heart of local communities.”

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Towards a Craft Revival: Recalibrating Social, Cultural, Economic and Technological Dynamics

This policy brief by the Renewal, Innovation and Change: Heritage and European Society (RICHES) project examines the factors, conditions and processes underpinning the reconciliation of culture and creativity as well as economic and employment growth. It specifically addresses craft-related knowledge and skills as emblematic instances of practices that embed a social, historical, cultural and economic value.

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