My Traditional Crafts Road project!

So instead of the long, boring and seemingly never-ending blogs of the past, I'm going to try something new -- keeping my blogs topical, and, gasp, short. :-) For those of you who know me, and know me well, you understand the magnitude of the challenge I am undertaking. For those of you who don't know me that well, well, just trust me on this one. :-)

My traditional crafts road project...first off, I'm the only one in my office who is working on this project, so it has kind of become my baby. I'm nervous that it won't be successful and perhaps fail to help local artisans and the tourism industry in any way. But I will continue to persevere and hopefully all of my hard work will pay off!

The TCR, as I lovingly refer to it, is essentially a circuit through part of Sibiu county called Marginimea Sibiului, marked by signs, where tourists can self-drive (or take public transport) and visit traditional artisans in their homes and purchase their wares. I started by gathering names and contact for all the artisans in this region of the county, and it's still incomplete. No one, it seems, has a master list. Artisans keep coming out of the woodwork like little ants! So one of the parts of this project will be turning over my completed and updated list to the local artisan association -- they can use it to recruit new members and basically keep a better track of the available artisans in the region.

Next, I devised a questionnaire that I used to rate the "tourism-readiness" of each artisan that I visited. I didn't visit all artisans in the county, of course, but as good candidates for this project bacame apparent, I localized my searching to Marginimea Sibiului. Basically, my assessment determined which artisans were most ready to receive tourists; i.e., were they in a tourist-friendly location? Did they regularly have goods to sell to the tourist? Could the tourist enter into their workshop/home M-F, 9am-5pm, without disturbing the rest of their family? Could the tourist view the artisan at work? How accessible was the artisan's location? I used questions such as these to narrow down approximately 50+ artisans in the county to 5 artisans to be featured on the TCR.

Each artisans featured on the TCR then received individualized consulting from our crafts consultant, and yours truly. We visited each artisan and gave them suggestions for how to make their home even more tourist-ready. It's always difficult going into someone's home and asking them to change things to make it the way you would want it, but there's a tactful way of going about it. The best lesson I've learned through this is that you have to take the first 20-30 minutes, if not the first few visits, to build people's trust in you, and in the project. Everyone was excited to be a part of the project, but regardless, I couldn't just go into someone's home and tell them to "move this there, and hang this here". No matter how much I wanted to at times, and believe me, there were times!

Other things that I'm doing with this project including currently providing the necessary materials to get artisans ready, such as purchasing business cards for them, taking pictures of them working in traditional costume and framing them for the walls; hanging their certificates and degrees, and arranging their wares in a "saleable" fashion. This part has actually been kind of fun; interior decorating...another career path, perhaps? :-)

The final product, of course, will be a brochure with touristic information on it, and each artisan featured with a picture and description of what they will offer the tourist if they visit. For instance, we have a branding consultant coming into Sibiu tomorrow, and she will visit one of the featured artisans, a weaver from a town called Tilisca. So, this weaver uses only natural fibers (from her own sheep she shears in her backyard, white, grey and black sheep!) and dyes, and is located near some other local tourist attractions, such as a small village house museum, and some reconstructed Dacian ruins (pre-Roman inhabitants of Romania). The past few days I have been running around trying to find items to add value to a tourist's visit to her home: a business card holder, a guestbook for people to sign, a scrapbook for pictures of her working and articles about her work, and some popourri for the mothball smell that is present with the sheep skins she has on display. Hey, gotta be practical, you know?

One of the other great parts of this project is that I'm able to work with one of my best friends, Jen Marcy, who works at CHF's Craft Center back in Washington. With the Crafts Center, we offered a free marketing seminar to all artisans in Sibiu County, and it was a success. Out of the 50 invitations, 39 artisans attended. Many of my coworkers were skeptical about this seminar, as past seminars have not been received well by the artisans (these took place in other parts of the country); so it was very validating to have everyone be enthusiastic about the seminar. The results from the questionnaire also indicated that everyone was happy with it, and looked forward to other seminars in the future, too.

So that's it on the TCR. I'm trying to get it finished (including road signage, directional signage in the towns, and storefront signage) done by mid-May, so it will be a stretch, what with all of my other projects going on. So wish me luck! :-)