Stoke-on-Trent For World Craft City
Stoke-on-Trent aims to become a World Craft City with international judges from the World Crafts Council visiting the city this week and visiting the top spots before making their final assessment.
🔗 Full length story (Stoke Creates)
🌍 World Craft Council Website
📍 World Craft Cities
The World Craft Council exists to strengthen the status of crafts within the economy and build partnerships between other cities with a craft status. For a city it’s an opportunity for its craftsmanship to be recognised and an opportunity to learn, connect and lobby governments.
This would be a chance for Stoke-on-Trent to globally consolidate (and announce) it’s rich heritage in ceramics and create new opportunities for our history to be turned into a present-day advantage that can support the development of the region.
I’m personally sceptical of the tourism benefits this accolade could give in the immediate term (I may be missing something). However the chance to be part of a global community of other cities with similar shared history is a brilliant chance for Stoke-on-Trent to gain inspiration for its evolution.
The international judges from the World Craft Council are visiting Stoke this week and are being ferried around all the top cultural spots. You name it and they’re going there for a visit, a cup of tea and, I assume, an oatcake at some point.
The judges will make their decision in a few months after their next board meeting.
After missing out on City of Culture in 2021, Craft City Status certainly feels more realistic and, in my opinion, more authentic. I believe anyone with a knowledge of The Potteries would argue and fight for Stoke-on-Trent’s impressive history in the ceramics industry to be recognised.
Our history deserves global status.