Crafting Futures was a three-year British Council global programme supporting the future of craft, its practices and people.
The Crafting Futures programme in Kazakhstan was developed in partnership with the University of Leicester, the Royal College of Art and the Union of Artisans of Kazakhstan.
The programme focused on two cities – Almaty and Shymkent. Our partners conducted a visit to Almaty and Shymkent in 2019 and identified a pressing need for business training for artisans.
The goal of the first phase of the workshops in 2019–20 was to build on the storytelling sessions conducted during the pilot study to produce a small exhibition of Kazakh craft, where the artisans can tell their own story.
The last two phases of the programme in 2020–22 were carried out during the pandemic online and offline and focused on:
- the deployment of creative and business skills that enable and articulate collective creative leadership ambitions of the craft practitioner communities in Kazakhstan
- mapping and making more visible the practices, work and artifacts of individual practitioners in order to bring international and national visibility, i.e. using Open Street Maps as a framework
- using the Business Canvas Model to enable the individual and independent approaches to entrepreneurship and business.
Detailed information about the programme can be found in the report.
