Higher Education on Craft Traditions
Traditional crafts are very seldom taught at university level. The partners of this network offer study programmes which preserve and maintain traditional craft knowledge with a future-oriented approach. They regard heritage properties and qualities as environmental, cultural and societal assets for the continuing development of society in local, national and global perspectives.
The network is innovative in that it intends to start systematic cooperation between HEIs (including international collaboration and student/staff exchange); to advance the programmes concerned with traditional crafts in Nordic–Baltic cultural area and to integrate institutionally and administratively separated researchers and students in traditional crafts and craft pedagogy. The aim is to encourage teachers and students to seek innovative approaches to already established practices by exchanging knowledge, experiences and visions on how to combine traditional crafts with the contemporary environment and the labour market. We intend to develop new methods and to put them into practice, keeping in mind the needs of the future.
The purpose is to strengthen relations between the different institutions to share experiences and create a basis for development on multiple levels:
• to discuss the differences and similarities between our organisations, course programmes, and pedagogic approaches;
• to foster student and staff mobility and internationalisation of the crafts sector;
• to offer professional development opportunities and increase our level of competence;
• to explore the diversity and potential of traditional ways of production in the contemporary society to support the integration between research, technology and traditional craft;
• to promote professional sustainability and strengthen the future opportunities for the students.
The network is supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers through Nordplus Higher Education Programme (NPHE-2019/10037 - Higher Education on Craft Traditions NN/2019).