Craft Safari in Kashmir: A move to revive state’s centuries old hand-made craft
Categories: DAILY NEWS
Kashmir handmade craft, which is world-famous and has helped Srinagar city to get Recognised as the UNESCO’s Creative City in the field of Craft and Art, is being revived now. The Jammu Kashmir government, under the Kashmir handicraft department, has started a process in a unique way to give new life to those world-famous dying craft of Kashmir.
Craft Safari is a new way adopted by authorities for the revival of the cultural heritage of Kashmir. A team of the officers from the Handicrafts and Handloom Department including its Director, Intellectuals, Academic Scholars, Journalists, Tour operators, Students and people from other fields move together and visit the artisans who still are carrying those centuries-old crafts in Kashmir.
The handicraft department makes sure that the safari members create awareness about those crafts. The craft safari included visiting artisans of crafts like Paper Mache, Woodcarving, Pottery, Silverware, Copperware, NamdhaKari, Pashmina and Silk Carpets.
This is to boost the historic heritage crafts of Kashmir and give them a better market because for the last two decades those heritage crafts have seen slow death due to the non-availability of the market. This has forced the newer generation not to carry trade those crafts forward but now as the government has shown pains for its revival those young artisans are seeing a ray of hope.
For this craft safari team department has taken the help of social media influencers and tourist players so that those crafts stories are posted on social media which can attract people across the globe to buy them, besides the tourist players, who host lakhs of tourists every year in the state, can take their tourist guests to those artisans direct.