"Tracks4Crafts": Horizon 2022

Kick-Off meeting held at the University of Antwerp March 22-24.

Tracks4Crafts 2023-2026: a Horizon 2022 funded, three-year European collaboration set to examine and transform the transmission of traditional crafts knowledge. In today’s world, crafts are valued as traditions, as heritage, but they sit uneasily in an economic environment focused on high-tech and mass-production.

The main aim of the project is to revive, validate and valorise crafts. Sixteen partners including the University of Antwerpen, University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, the Association of European Open Air Museums and World Crafts Council Europe will collaborate to identify and test alternative formats of knowhow transmission (both in physical spaces and with new digital technologies), business models to bring traditional crafts knowledge to the market, boosting  entrepreneurship, and developing tools for applying legal regulation and certification.

A selection of pilot cases, including the Textile Center, working in different crafts traditions, with different materials and at different levels of experimentation with digital and new technologies is at the centre of Tracks4Crafts. The Kick-Off meeting was held in Antwerpen from March 24-26 - we look forward to this collaboration!