We started this project believing the craft sector is important both for preservation of local culture and heritage , contributing to the uniqueness of the regions, regional appeal to its visitors, inhabitants and to the regional economy as a source of local employment, and social and economic stability and European countries have long traditions and culture of crafts. Today, the crafts sector in general in the EU faces several important problems, such as: the strong global competition of cheaper products; loss of old skills and traditions; difficulties of getting into the markets; loosing the customer appeal of traditional crafts' products; (lack of financial resources and economic capacity, and the most dangerous of all, the new generations don’t recognize it as something valuable. Therefore, our partnership set the two overall objectives of this project:raising awareness of the cultural heritage of each partner country and to emphasize the importance of the craft industry in the European Union, raising the question of its its importance in the economy and development of each project partner region. The specific objectives of the project are: 1) To learn from each other about the ways of promoting traditional crafts among adults via crafts workshops 2) To exchange the possible ways for improving and extending the supply of high quality learning opportunities in the art craft, tailored to the specific needs of individual adults 3) To raise educators' competences in teaching students traditional crafts by exchanging practice from 4 different countries 4) To disseminate the project results and raise awareness among all target groups – adult students,policy and decision makers at at regional, national and EU-levels, craftsmen and craft sector stakeholders, and general public thus rising awareness about each partner’s cultural identity. Target groups we are addressing are adults not completely aware of the variety of their cultural heritage, teachers/trainers who run such craft workshops and who seek to develop new methods in work, people with some educational difficulties who can benefit from the tailor-made programes, and local/regional/national public of our partner countries in general who can raise their awareness about the cultural heritage since we'll get new tools and new ways of promoting these programmes. We hope that with this project we will succeed in getting the best practices and success stories from four partner countries related to both the popularization of art crafts in order to preserve cultural heritage and rising educators competences in teaching about cultural heritage through these art crafts. Moreover, we will develop a list of ideas for improving and extending the supply of high quality learning opportunities in the art craft, tailor –made for specific groups. Lat, but not the least, professional/teaching staff of our four institutions will raise their competences through participating in the project. In the end, the most important benefit of the project on the long run is better awareness of different ways of promoting cultural heritage as a way of keeping each country's identity and as a reminder to the future generations of their own past.
We started this project believing the craft sector is important both for the preservation of local culture and heritage, contributing to the uniqueness of the regions, regional appeal to its visitors, inhabitants and to the regional economy as a source of local employment, and social and economic stability and European countries have long traditions and culture of crafts. Today, the crafts sector in general in the EU faces several important problems, such as the strong global competition of cheaper products; loss of old skills and traditions; difficulties of getting into the markets; losing the customer appeal of traditional crafts' products; (lack of financial resources and economic capacity, and the most dangerous of all, the new generations don’t recognize it as something valuable. Therefore, our partnership at the beginning of the project set the two overall objectives: raising awareness of the cultural heritage of each partner country and emphasizing the importance of the craft industry in the European Union, raising the question of its importance in the economy and development of each project partner region. Moreover, the specific objectives of the project were: 1) To learn from each other about the ways of promoting traditional crafts among adults via crafts workshops 2) To exchange the possible ways for improving and extending the supply of high-quality learning opportunities in the art craft, tailored to the specific needs of individual adults 3) To raise educators' competences in teaching students traditional crafts by exchanging practice from 4 different countries 4) To disseminate the project results and raise awareness among all target groups – adult students, policy, and decision-makers at regional, national, and EU-levels, craftsmen and craft sector stakeholders, and general public thus raising awareness about each partner’s cultural identity. All these objectives set at the beginning of the projects were met until the end of the project. The participants that took part in the project were 60 employees of four participating organizations,30 teachers/ trainers from four countries, and 233 students who attended art craft courses from four partner organizations. Apart from the Transnational project meetings which we used for good practice exchange, the other activities we undertook were desk research about all topics relevant to the project, conducted surveys among teachers and students, collected testimonies among students, and a list of recommendations on all relevant topics. The list of recommendations will be available on web pages of all partner institutions and useful to all stakeholders interested in cultural heritage, its promotion, craft sector, and its importance. The results of the project are good practice exchange about the ways of promoting cultural heritage through art crafts, learning from the experience of four partner organizations about marketing strategies that we use in order to make art crafts visible, raised competences of our teachers/trainers about teaching about cultural heritage through art crafts, and the good practice exchange about tailor-made programs for specific groups of students. - The impact we succeeded in is the most visible in the: - higher awareness of participants, participating organizations, target groups and relevant stakeholders of the importance of preserving the cultural heritage, in the European context - getting knowledge of the ways and techniques of promoting cultural heritage through art workshops - practitioners now aware of the possibilities in teaching about cultural heritage - practitioners acknowledged themselves as valuable contributors to the general culture. The special impact the project has made on participants who have some educational or geographic difficulties, or some kind of physical impairment or unemployed people. They will be given the possibility to attend these craft workshops designed to suit their needs and requirements. It can bring both higher competitiveness on the labor market and a sense of self-confidence in acquiring new skills and learning about the cultural heritage in the same way. Longer/term benefits for all four partner organizations are better educational offers, more skillful teachers/trainers, quality programs, and above all better awareness of different ways of promoting cultural heritage as a way of keeping each country's identity and as a reminder to the future generations of their own past.