Crafts Council Nederland

Crafts Council Nederland (founded in 2012) contributes to the development of crafts and the creative crafts culture. We aim to achieve this by supporting individual craftsman as well as define, give visibility and promote the sector, the crafts domain.

In the Netherlands such an organisation was missing: The crafts sector wasn’t organised, there was a gap in visibility, knowledge, education, infrastructure and the preservation of quality.

CCNL is the initiator of a great and growing community of craftsman, museums and educational institutions, economy and government. Each party involved builds a link in the transition to a new form of meaning within the sector. Through CCNL the sector becomes a ‘’face’’, a national and international contact point.

With creative crafts we mean: Crafts techniques, which combine creative and creating components with artistic talent and a sense for aesthetics. While the English-language craftsmanship, the more artistic craftsmanship distinguishes itself from trade such as lead-casting and grasping, in the Netherlands we do all this together under the name crafts.

Examples for creative crafts techniques are weaving, wood-working, leather-working, forging, glass blowing or ceramic techniques, whether or not in combination with new digital techniques. Under craftsmanship we understand: extraordinary practitioners of traditional techniques, these practitioners are technology specialists as well as maker-designers. We call them: Makers.

Crafts knowledge belongs to the intangible heritage which gets transferred from person to person. Connecting people who still have this knowledge and people who want learn from it, is the natural result of our work.

Makers, designers and companies cannot always find themselves. This is on the one hand because makers are not organized as a group, and on the other because they come from different generations or are in other communities, specializations or business cultures.

Everyone has their own means of communication, their own visual language and their own knowledge domain. Our connecting role is shaped through our activities, communication, presentation and through matchmaking.

Vision

CCNL pleads for a revaluation of the creative crafts in the Netherlands and for the preservation of crafts techniques. The knowledge, collected over centuries, is important for the future, especially in the time of digitalization, robotization, mass production and uniformity. For us, crafts stand for quality, creativity, beauty, sustainability, humanity, identity, diversity, education through making, knowledge, wisdom and innovation.

Mission

It’s our mission to create a solid basis for crafts, in order for them to take a natural and permanent position within the Netherlands.

Crafts Council Nederland is the driving force and the catalysator for such and offers support, presentation, development and connection for craftsmen as well as for the sector.

CCNL is concentrating on five goals:

  1. Support of the makers, in order for them to develop their creative talent and competencies; there is no other organisation which offers this on a structural and professional level.
  2. The mapping, retention and on-passing of crafts knowledge and skills to prevent their loss. This is the case with the usual educational and professional practice.
  3. Enabling research and innovation to stimulate the progress within the sector.
  4. Offering a stage for the domain to become visible and to enable its exposure to a large audience.
  5. To stimulate the expansion of crafts in other sectors. This is necessary to build a solid basis for the creative crafts.

Team

Marion Poortvliet (founder)
Willemien Ippel (co-founder)
Guusje Heesakkers (communication and project manager)

Crafts Council Nederland also works together with a pool of professionals.