- Catalonia’s candidacy to host this European summit of the craft sector was unanimously approved at the WCC-Europe assembly being held this year in Malta
- The Commerce, Crafts and Fashion Consortium (CCAM) of the Generalitat de Catalunya has also been chosen as a new member of the Board of Directors of this institution that promotes crafts throughout Europe and the world
Catalonia will host and organise the General Assembly and International Conference of the World Crafts Council - Europe (WCC-Europe) in June 2024. Yesterday, the Commerce, Crafts and Fashion Consortium (CCAM) of the Ministry of Business and Labour presented Catalonia’s candidacy to host this European summit of the crafts sector at the assembly of the WCC-Europe, which this year is being held in Malta, and it was approved unanimously.
WCC-Europe is currently composed of 36 organisations from 23 different European countries and is considered one of the most important international organisations for the promotion and support of crafts.
The choice of Catalonia as the venue to host the two events “highlights the value of the Crafts Internationalisation Plan that the Catalan Government is promoting to boost the prestige and international recognition of the sector, to showcase the quality of Catalan crafts around the world”, said the director of the CCAM, Agnès Russiñol i Amat. She went on to point out that in 2024 “we will be the epicentre of crafts; representatives from all over Europe, from the thirty or so entities that form part of the World Crafts Council, will meet in Catalonia to attend what will be the 16th edition of the Assembly, to address the future and the challenges of the crafts sector”.
At the meeting in Malta, the Commerce, Crafts and Fashion Consortium (CCAM) of the Generalitat de Catalunya was also chosen as a new member of the Board of Directors of this institution, “which means being part of the WCC-Europe’s decision-making and strategic body and having the capacity to contribute directly to the actions implemented to strengthen the sector”, said Russiñol.
Catalonia, through the CCAM, has been a member of WCC-Europe since 2018, and has actively collaborated in different programmes for the promotion and dissemination of European crafts: including the Crafts Code and Crafting Europe projects, as well as the European Artistic Crafts Days.
As part of the internationalisation plan, the CCAM’s Crafts area organises and collaborates in international activities, generating synergies with other countries and international entities, exchanging knowledge and promoting international relations to create opportunities for crafts. It is also currently a member of the Michelangelo Foundation. It has taken the Neomateria exhibition to South Korea and has promoted the International Crafts Audiovisual Exhibition, which is in its fifth year. The first Biennial of Contemporary Catalan Crafts, with a focus on the relationship between crafts and art, participated in Homo Faber in Venice and in Révélations in Paris, and the second Biennial is currently under way with the exhibition “Visions of Catalonia. Designing Craft”, which you can visit at the Centre d’Artesania Catalunya until next October and which will begin its international tour this November at the Dubai Design Week 2023.