Northern Crafts ID Consulting Center opened on European Cooperation Day

Submitted by KA8028 on
Open Doors Day

The European Cooperation Week became an excellent occasion for the Association ECHO and its partners in the Nordic Crafts ID project to hold the first-ever public event in the newly opened Consulting Center. The Center was established in Petrozavodsk to help craftworkers gain entrepreneurial skills and succeed in sales. All day on September 24, project staff received guests from Petrozavodsk, Essoila, Kondopoga, Khaikolya, Kroshnozero, Novaya Vilga and from across Karelia.

It was a day of discoveries: in addition to the Consulting Center itself, the guests of the Open Doors Day got aquatinted with the Captured Crafts exhibit by photographer Ilona Olkonen. This exhibit was meant to be a photo report of the expedition “In Search of the Nordic Crafts Code”. The immediate participants of this expedition - Svetlana Kolchurina, Alexey Tsykarev and Alina Chuburova - spoke about the main discoveries and preliminary assessments of the state of development of handicraft entrepreneurship in the Republic of Karelia and the regions of North-West Russia. An exchange of views took place on how to transfer crafts related knowledge to children and how to increase the prestige of manual labor and the profession of an artisan.

The EU-Russia cross-border cooperation programs mark the European Cooperation Day by holding various events aimed at popularizing the results of joint projects. The Nordic Crafts ID project received funding from the Karelia CBC Programme in 2020. The project aims to expand opportunities for the development of craft entrepreneurship in the Republic of Karelia (Russia), North Karelia and the Oulu region (Finland).