Europe’s traditional crafts sector is at a critical juncture. While there is growing cultural appreciation for artisanal practices in an era of mass production, the systems that sustain and transmit traditional crafts knowledge (TCK) are under severe pressure. Current EU research and innovation frameworks have yet to fully account for the complexity, value, and potential of this domain. TCK is predominantly transmitted through embodied, non-codified, and often informal methods that remain invisible to mainstream policy instruments. In international regulatory frameworks crafts almost exclusively appear as a separated domain under the heading of intangible cultural heritage, mostly under the influence of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. As a result, vital craft practices—and the communities that sustain them—are increasingly marginalised within research agendas, labour classifications, and sustainability strategies.

The policy problem is not the absence of craft knowledge, but rather the inadequacy of current mechanisms to recognize, support, and integrate this knowledge into broader European policy objectives. These include sustainability, inclusion, education, and innovation. Existing research frameworks are overwhelmingly structured around cognitive, digital, and techno-scientific paradigms, which exclude or devalue the situated, tacit, and hands-on learning central to craft traditions. This exclusion fosters the erosion of a significant knowledge domain that could otherwise contribute meaningfully to EU priorities such as the Green Deal, SDG implementation, and inclusive innovation.

The EU-funded Tracks4Crafts project directly addresses this gap. It explores how crafts can be repositioned as a strategic resource for Europe’s socio-economic and ecological transitions. Through interdisciplinary experimentation in eight craft ecosystems, the project develops new models for learning, validation, and collaboration that bridge traditional making with digital technologies and future-oriented heritage approaches. The project demonstrates that crafts are not relics of the past, but evolving practices rich in potential for regenerative economies, intergenerational learning, and culturally grounded innovation.

This policy brief draws on Tracks4Crafts’ findings to argue for a new research and policy paradigm: one that sees crafts not as residual heritage, but as a vibrant and forward-looking knowledge system. It offers concrete recommendations to reframe crafts within EU R&I agendas, develop supportive infrastructures, and ensure their long-term viability through inclusive and cross-sectoral policymaking.

The Tracks4Crafts (T4C) project reveals that legal and policy recognition of the crafts sector across Europe is fragmented, inconsistent, and insufficiently aligned with the challenges crafts face today. National frameworks are highly diverse, ranging from those that treat crafts primarily as economic or vocational activity to others that integrate crafts under cultural or intangible heritage policy umbrellas. However, few countries recognize crafts as a complex field that sits at the intersection of heritage, innovation, education, and economic policy.

• Most states lack specific and coherent legal definitions of crafts. Where such definitions exist, they tend to be narrow or outdated, failing to account for hybrid economic or educational practices or the integration of digital tools in contemporary craft production.

• Crafts are underrepresented in Intellectual Property (IP) regimes, and many practitioners lack the knowledge or access to leverage protections such as geographical indications or collective trademarks.

• The sector suffers from policy fragmentation, often governed by multiple ministries or agencies (culture, education, economy, labour), leading to a lack of strategic coherence.

Implication for Policy: A unified, cross-sectoral policy approach is necessary, one that acknowledges the dual nature of crafts as both cultural heritage and a dynamic economic sector. This should be supported by inclusive legal definitions, updated IP protections, and simplified governance structures.

Deliverable 2.5 of T4C highlights a serious mismatch between the rich and evolving realities of craft practices and the rigid taxonomies used in European classification systems such as ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations)

• Craft occupations are either entirely absent, ambiguously defined, or improperly categorized, leading to invisibility in labour and education statistics and a lack of policy traction.

• In classification systems, crafts are mostly either under the heading “artistic crafts” (subordinate to art) or related to low-skilled vocational training. The ESCO database does not adequately represent interdisciplinary or hybrid crafts, particularly those that integrate digital tools or sustainability-focused practices.

• As a result, the potential of crafts is eclipsed and the funding, training, and  certification systems fail to capture or support contemporary craft skill sets.

Implication for Policy: Reform is needed in EU-level taxonomies and databases. ESCO and similar instruments should be updated to include a broader, more nuanced, and future-oriented spectrum of craft occupations, including those tied to digital transformation and sustainability.

Findings from Deliverable 2.6 underscore the importance of recognizing traditional craft knowledge (TCK) as embedded in dynamic ecosystems—composed of practitioners, materials, tools, apprentices, technologies, and institutions. The report identifies key transmission mechanisms that extend beyond workshops and schools to include fab labs, maker spaces, museums, and digital platforms.

• Pilot case studies demonstrate that intergenerational transmission is at risk, particularly where there is no viable economic model to sustain the practice.

• Emerging digital environments and technologies (e.g., AR-enhanced learning, AI-driven documentation tools) offer promising solutions but require targeted investment, training, and infrastructure.

• Models of collaborative learning and community co-creation (e.g., hybrid learning environments, intergenerational workshops) proved more effective than traditional schooling for crafts knowledge.

Implication for Policy: EU and national education policies should invest in experimental and hybrid learning formats, while incentivizing institutions and learning environments (e.g., museums, fab labs, universities) to serve as hubs for collaborative TCK transmission.

The pilot experiments detailed in Deliverable 4.2 reveal that the sustainability of crafts is not solely a cultural issue—it is fundamentally economic. New craft models must be competitive in markets shaped by globalization, digitalization, and environmental imperatives.

• Many craft enterprises remain micro or informal, lacking access to capital, digital infrastructure, and markets; in addition to that they also lack the business models which could help them to be competitive and sustainable in the current economic context.

• New forms of certification and branding (e.g., linked to sustainability or place-based identity) can improve the valuation and marketing of crafts, especially if tied to digital platforms or regional development strategies and when integrated in their business models.

• Cross-sector collaborations, especially those combining artisans with technologists and designers, led to new products and economic opportunities in nearly all pilots, but this is in dire need of support and incentivizing.

Implication for Policy: Support structures such as incubators, innovation vouchers, and craft- specific certification programs should be developed—along with business models in which these could be integrated. They must address both traditional artisans and new entrants engaged in hybrid craft practices, including those working with recycled materials, digital fabrication, or community co-design.

The project confirms the relevance of crafts for EU priorities such as the Green Deal, the New European Bauhaus, and the European Skills Agenda. Craft practices are often inherently sustainable (focused on re-use, the use of local materials, low energy) and regionally embedded, fostering a short-circuit economy and offering place-based solutions for economic revitalization.

• Craft ecosystems support local (including rural) development, and circular and short circuit economy initiatives, but they often lack the levers and support to do so in a sustainable way.

• Crafts are the ideal vehicles for inclusive employment—particularly for women, older adults, and marginalized groups—they are not recognized as such.

• Current policy fails to sufficiently integrate crafts into regional development or ecological and social sustainability strategies.

Implication for Policy: Crafts should be recognized for their potential for social and ecological sustainability and be integrated into regional innovation strategies (RIS3), smart specialization platforms, and territorial cooperation frameworks.

The Tracks4Crafts project presents a rich evidence base showing that crafts—when recognized as dynamic, knowledge-intensive, and ecosystem-based practices—can be powerful levers for social cohesion and inclusion, sustainability, and innovation. However, systemic barriers in classification, policy fragmentation, legal recognition, and support structures undermine their potential.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Future EU research policy must recognize crafts not as a residual heritage sector, but as a dynamic knowledge domain at the intersection of practice, innovation, and cultural transmission. TCK offers vital potential for embodied and integrated learning, circular and short-circuit economies, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and creativity and innovation beyond codified or cognitive paradigms. These insight show how craft can in fact play an active role in society and for society.

General Policy Recommendations for Research policy:

• Recognize crafts as a distinct interdisciplinary research field within Horizon Europe and successor programs, at the intersection of heritage, sustainability, design, education, and economic and technological innovation.

• Establish a dedicated research cluster on Craft Knowledge Systems that investigates crafts as complex, hybrid, and historically rooted forms of making, while also addressing their contemporary transformations—particularly in relation to sustainability, digital innovation, inclusive economies, and the transmission of skills and knowledge.

• Support epistemological research on tacit, embodied, and non-verbal learning— key characteristics of craft knowledge (TCK)—which are underrepresented in current research and policy taxonomies.

• Explore alternative methodologies, including ethnography, practice-led research, and sensory/multimodal documentation, to capture the specificity of craft practices.

• Encourage collaborations between craftspeople and researchers to co-produce knowledge and revalue hands-on and hybrid modes of inquiry within academia.

• Favour the spreading of the results of studies about alternative certification models (e.g. www.charteralliance.eu) such as peer-reviewed portfolios, badges, or community-based recognition systems, especially for informal and non-formal craft learning pathways, and launch new ones.

• Research the feasibility of new EU-level validation tools tailored to TCK that move beyond traditional qualification frameworks and embrace complexity, hybridity, diversity, and non-linearity in learning

• Support research on how craft practices contribute to the circular economy, sustainable material use, and local value chains—especially in relation to the EU Green Deal goal, the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and MONDIACULT (UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development).

• Investigate crafts as tools for inclusive economies, addressing local and rural revitalization, gendered labour, intergenerational transmission, and migration- linked knowledge flows.

  
  

• Analyse how crafts straddle categories—as heritage, artistic expression, design practice, and economic activity—and what this hybridity means for classification systems, funding logics, and institutional support.

• Research the changing identities of makers, including their hybrid roles (e.g. maker-designer-curator-educator), their a-typical career pathways, and the evolving definitions of professionalism in crafts.

  
  

• Fund comparative studies of skills taxonomies (ESCO, EQF, ISCO, NACE) to understand how crafts are included—or excluded—across systems, and how to create more inclusive, dynamic models. 

  
  

• Create a European Knowledge Commons for Crafts, including databases, multimedia repositories, and storytelling platforms that valorise maker knowledge and encourage intergenerational and hybrid learning.

• Support cross-border and multilingual dissemination of craft-related research outputs, recognizing the linguistic and cultural diversity of craft traditions across Europe.

Policy implications for EC R&I programmes:

Current R&I frameworks are dominated by cognitive, digital, or techno-scientific conceptions of knowledge. Yet crafts imply:

• tacit and embodied knowledge (learned by doing),

• context-specific innovation (material, aesthetic, social, cultural),

• non-linear, non-codified forms of transmission.

Policy implication:
EU research policy (e.g., Horizon Europe calls, ERC criteria, MSCA frameworks) must explicitly recognize non-formal, embodied and hybrid knowledge production as legitimate research outputs. This may include artifacts, process documentation, oral transmission, or embodied experimentation.

Craft knowledge is best accessed through embedded research, where practitioners are both subjects and agents of inquiry. However, current research funding rarely supports projects where craftspeople lead or co-design research.

Policy implication:
Create dedicated funding lines for practice-based, transdisciplinary research consortia that include craft practitioners, anthropologists, designers, cultural economists, and heritage scholars. This aligns with the New European Bauhaus and EIT Culture & Creativity, but needs expansion in core research policy.

Craft practices offer low-impact, circular, and locally adaptive alternatives to industrial and serial production. Yet they remain underrepresented in sustainability-related R&I programs.

Policy implication:
Position crafts within Horizon Europe missions (e.g., Climate-Neutral Cities, Adaptation to Climate Change) and cluster research themes (e.g., Cluster 2 and 6) as experimental grounds for sustainability, material reuse, and regenerative economies. This supports the EU Green Deal and SDG integration.

The report shows crafts are misclassified or marginalized in ESCO, ISCO, EQF, and NACE. This affects funding, policy visibility, and training initiatives.

Policy implication:
Fund comparative and analytical research into alternative models of skill recognition, drawing on heritage, anthropology, and labour history, to develop new “profiles” or “repertoires of evaluation” that reflect actual craft practices and their epistemologies.

There is currently no coherent research agenda on crafts at the EU level, despite their cross- cutting relevance to digital transitions, education and social inclusion, circular and short- circuit economies, and cultural diversity and cohesion.

Policy implication:
Introduce a craft-focused research priority under Horizon Europe or as a dedicated Partnership/Cluster. Alternatively, develop a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for crafts as part of the European Research Area’s widening and inclusion efforts.

Tracks4Crafts (T4C) is a Horizon Europe-funded research and innovation project (Grant Agreement No. 101094507) aimed at transforming the transmission of Traditional Craft Knowledge (TCK) in Europe. Spanning from March 2023 to February 2027, T4C addresses the urgent need to reposition crafts as a dynamic and future-oriented domain of cultural heritage, creativity, and sustainable development. Rather than treating crafts as residual or static traditions, the project conceptualizes them as ecosystems of practice that integrate embodied knowledge, material expertise, and social meaning. The overarching goal is to align TCK transmission with contemporary challenges, including digital transformations, ecological transitions, and inclusive economic development.

The project pursues four main objectives:

• Transform craft learning environments by developing and testing innovative transmission models in physical spaces such as fab labs, maker spaces, and cultural institutions.

• Leverage digital technologies to enhance and safeguard craft knowledge, including tools for documentation, augmented learning, and knowledge sharing.

• Develop tools for economic viability, such as new models for certification, intellectual property protection, and business innovation tailored to craft ecosystems.

• Build networks and knowledge infrastructures to valorise craft knowledge across borders and sectors, reinforcing the societal relevance and policy visibility of crafts.

To meet these objectives, T4C employs a transdisciplinary and action-based methodology grounded in co-creation and ecosystem thinking. The project mobilizes a consortium of universities, cultural institutions, design labs, heritage organizations, and pilot case sites across eight European countries. Research is organized into seven interconnected work packages, covering conceptual analysis, legal frameworks, skills mapping, experimental pilot projects, evaluation, and policy development.

A central methodological feature is the use of pilot case studies—embedded in diverse national contexts and material traditions—to test new formats of TCK transmission. These include hands-on experiments with hybrid learning formats, augmented reality applications, digital repositories, and collaborative maker projects. Alongside empirical data collection, T4C develops theoretical models (e.g. the “craft ecosystem” framework), critical mappings of classification systems, and policy recommendations, all aimed at reshaping how Europe values, supports, and sustains its craft heritage.

FURTHER READING

Note: The author used ChatGPT (OpenAI) to improve grammar and fluency in English. All content and arguments are the author’s own.