Govt-run design school set to expand in Lucknow; empowering local artisans with business training

LUCKNOW City-based Uttar Pradesh Institute of Design and Research is set to expand its campus by another 7.5 acres, and double the number of enrolments this year, said chairperson Kshipra Shukla, co-convenor of the U.P. Weaver Artisan Cell on Thursday. The institute has also been able to provide skill and business training to over 60,000 local artisans across 35 districts of the state.

The school was set up under the Department of MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) and Export Promotion, and has been aiding in the promotion of local arts and crafts under the ODOP (One District One Product) and VSSY (Vishwakarma Shram Samman Yojana) schemes.

“Starting 2017, we have been conducting training programs spanning over seven or ten days in different districts, teaching the local artisans about business and finance management, marketing, social media promotion, and more. This year alone, we have trained over 14,000 artists already, and will have trained 30,000 more by the end of 2023,” said Shukla. They have empowered artists of black pottery, chikankari, metalware, gulabi meenakari, and rogan art, among many other art forms.

Shukla, also a former student of fashion design and journalism, having graduated from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, took up the cause of neglected handicrafts and art forms as she saw the untapped minefield of skill that it could be. “We reached out to the artisans in remote districts of U.P. during the pandemic, providing them with ration and medicines. While their lives and businesses had come to a complete standstill, artisans practising these delicate yet underrepresented art forms found themselves in terrible conditions,” she said. Shukla, the daughter of three-time former MLA Ram Kumar Shukla, has been in the export industry for 15 years.

Not only do they enlist subject experts from across the country and sometimes even abroad, to come in and speak with the artists, but they also attempt to contemporise those art forms with more modern designs, by merging art forms and design templates. These artisans have received recognition from the Prime Minister, and vendors and buyers from across the nation. The Prime Minister gifted a gulabi meenakari chess set to the vice president of the United States Kamala Harris on his trip there. The gulabi meenakari art form is practised in Varanasi, and it involves enamelling metals by fusing different minerals over it by heating them to achieve different colours.

Kunj Bihari Singh from Varanasi, a gulabi meenakari artist, has gone from being jobless, to receiving orders worth lakhs monthly, and has won a national award as well. Following his training, he has learned how to properly photograph and represent his products online, and has expanded his business to online platforms like Amazon as well. “Around 2012, everyone practicing the art form had become jobless due to the fluctuating silver rate. However, our business shot up after becoming associated with UPIDR and ODOP. After the PM gifted my products to Kamala Harris, within four to five hours, I received orders worth Rs. 1.5 crore,” said Bihari.

Dilshad Hussain is another such artist who rose to fame with the help of UPIDR training programmes. He is a brass carver from Moradabad who received the Padma Shri for his artistry in March this year. “We have called many of these artists to give skills training and expert lectures to our students at the institute,” said Shukla. “This not only makes them feel respected but also gives the students an insight into the technical knowledge that they are not otherwise privy to. At our school, the students must take up at least two handicraft forms as electives. So far, pottery and weaving have been most popular amongst the children,” she added.