Crafts from across the country go online

Shilp Route brings together a range of unique products by 15 hand-picked artisans from across the country

The country and its crafts

The Shilp Route Crafting Connections is an exhibition of home furnishings and décor that is available online till November 30. Featuring the work of 15 artisans from across the country, The Shilp Route initiative is in collaboration with Social Venture Partners, Bengaluru, and is powered by GoCoop.

This is the first edition of The Shilp Route and was conceptualised to help the artisan community overcome a marked loss of income incurred during the pandemic and give them a boost.“Our priority while putting together this exhibition was to find artisans from remote locations who have always sold their products at traditional or local markets as they were the hardest hit when sales dropped during the pandemic. Besides, most of them don’t have the bandwidth to go digital and never sold their products online,” says Sanjana Govindan, general manager of Social Venture Partners, Bengaluru.

“We also wanted to help those artisans who had always worked as a collective and were now left with a huge inventory they were unable to sell,” she adds. This initiative also saw ‘Craft Patriots’ — those passionate about Indian crafts — step up to help the artisan community.

“Social Venture Partners (SVP) is a venture philanthropic fund and many Craft Patriots are individuals from the SVP network who business leaders, patrons of the arts and crafts, social influencers and anybody who found value in promoting both the artisan and the craft in their network with the altruistic goal of enabling sales,” says Sanjana.

Artisans from Karnataka, Nagaland, Gujarat and Kashmir are showcasing handmade Kutchi carpets, copper cookware, miniature Pichhvai paintings, wall hangings and more.

The Shilp Route online exhibition can be viewed on www.gocoop.com.

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