Craft Your Future aims at vocational students and is a combination of traditional crafts with the latest technologies to create solutions for the circular economy.

The project contributes to social cohesion by letting young people become closer to and more involved with their region’s cultural heritage. Students will become aware of their regions’ traditional crafts and spot the threats that this specific cultural heritage is facing. By being aware of and actively involved with cultural heritage, students will learn to cherish it and realize that it is more than historical monuments left behind from the past. Students will grasp that cultural heritage is all the things, places and practices that define who we are as individuals, as communities, as regions. It will enhance the sense of local pride of youngsters and therefore the liveability of a region.

CULTURAL HERITAGE, NEW TECHNIQUES AND SUSTAINABILIY SHAPE OUR IDENTITIES AND LIVES
The regions Friesland (NL), Central Bulgaria (BG), Valencia (ES) bear a wealth of intangible heritage, such as traditions, knowledge of old crafts and social networks. What all regions have in common is waste. It has become essential to create a circular economy in which the reuse of products and raw materials is maximized, and their value destruction minimized. In Craft Your Future students examine whether the advancing technology and trends can help revitalize old crafts using waste as raw material.

STUDENTS IN THE LEAD
The rise of youth unemployment in the EU underlines the necessity to spark a dynamic and positive attitude among young people towards enterprising behavior, networking skills, and pro-activity. Learning by doing and educating students to take initiative and investigate opportunities themselves, rather than waiting for others to take the initiative, will increase employability. Craft Your Future addresses this need by the key focus on the initiative of the student.

OBJECTIVES
Craft your Future recognizes that young people in Europe must look outwards and proactively engage with the challenges and opportunities that our modern globalizing world provides.
What trends & new technologies (e.g. 3D printing and laser cutting but also the use of big data, new ways of interacting, social entrepreneurship, circular economy) are feeding into our society today that can lift traditional crafts to the 21st century?

Project Partners

Polytechnical University of Valencia, Spain
Friesland College, The Netherlands
House of Design, The Netherlands
FabLab Valencia, Spain
The Fabric, Bulgaria
Tryavna Art School, Bulgaria

Project Funders