ASEAN design festival aims to develop new master craftsmen

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will hold a design festival and a regional meeting in Manila to develop and propagate master craft designers of export products from the region and regain their high marketability worldwide.

The festival will have a pavilion featuring the works of master craftsmen Roselyn Long Lah of Malaysia, Lim Masulin of Indonesia, Truong PhiDuc of Viet Nam, Rush Pleansuk of Thailand and Al Valenciano of the Philippines.

Initiated by the ASEAN Handicraft Promotion and Development Association ( AHPADA) and Philippine Small and Medium Business Development Foundation Inc. (PHILSMED) and funded by the ASEAN- Republic of Korea Future Oriented Cooperation Program.

The ASEAN Master Craft Design Festival will take place at the World Trade Center on Oct. 20-22 as one of the special features of the Manila FAME, the country’s premier international event for lifestyle exports.

In the same pursuit, a regional dialog and meeting will be held on Oct. 22, to be attended by senior master craftsmen from the 10 ASEAN- member states and facilitated by former tourism secretary and PHILSMED chair Mina Gabor as project director. Also joining the meeting are ministry representatives from the first five ASEAN- member states as focal points.

The festival will be held alongside the October Manila FAME and in collaboration with the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions of the Department of Trade and Industry.

Gabor said the project stemmed from the decline in the export sales of Southeast Asian crafts as observed by Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines during the meeting of the AHPADA in Clark, Pampanga in 2009.

“The AHPADA members found the decline evident in the sales of furniture/ furnishings, gifts and housewares, garden accessories and fashion goods, which used to enjoy a high demand in Europe, North America, Japan, Korea and Australia,” Gabor pointed out, describing the problem as “regional” because the materials used for those products were indigenously ASEAN.

“Then the AHPADA members found out that the ASEAN producers tended to copy from each other for lack of training as a result of the diminishing number of mastercraft designers in the region. Thus, the solution is, not only to groom and propagate mastercraft designers, but also to make them develop and establish their individual cultural identity, attain brand distinction despite the regional commonality of raw materials, encourage product diversification and sustain diversity, and ultimately enable them to name their price,” Gabor explained.

Thus, the AHPADA meeting, held soon after the 2nd International Arts and Craft Expo in Manila in 2009, has given birth to the biennial ASEAN Mastercraft Designers Festival.