HUNAR Arts & Crafts  

Creating Livelihoods, Empowering Artisans

Hunar Arts & Crafts is a collective of women artisans from the poorest households of urban Bhopal,  Madhya Pradesh, India. Many women at Hunar are survivors of domestic violence and gender based discrimination. These are skilled women artisans with interests in designing hand-made products including handmade notebooks, bags, pouches, purses, multi-purpose kit holders, folders, backpacks, home décor items besides working on jute, fabric painting, embroidery, screen printing and zari work. Hunar is based in old city of Bhopal with a store in the Arera Colony location.

Hunar currently participates in exhibitions and hosts their own exhibition as well in different parts of the city. We have been associated with Anant Mandi, Bhopal; and work closely with the young
artisans at Aranya, Bhopal. We also collaborate with young designers and artists from design institutes and with film makers who are interested to document the empowerment process of the
women’s group. Hunar is honoured to partner with organizations like PRADAN, TRIF, Save the Children, UNIFEM, Eklavya and many other such groups working with women and children. Our
products are customized to suit the client requirements.

Hunar functions in a large scale production mode but is also keen to retain its key identity as a skilled artisans group designing unique handmade products. 

In future we aspire to:

• Establish a fully equipped design studio with technical preparedness to support a team of 15 artisans with various capacities
• Tie up with women artisans and collectives for training and work contracts
• Create a range of design products with a focus on handmade products by women artisans
• Create a niche for Hunar products by establishing a local and virtual store
• Cater to international markets especially in collaboration with other artisans groups
• Ensure Minimum wages, health insurance, education for children and other benefits for the workers and their children.

Why Handmade?

• Handmade describes the quality and uniqueness of a product. Handmade products have a uniqueness and inconsistency due to the individual nature of creation by the human hand. Unlike machine made products, handmade creations are not standardized designs rather each piece of work is painstakingly created by an artisan who spends hours in research, experimentation, exploring markets for raw material and finally drafting different designs to arrive at the final idea. It is this extensive work that makes a handmade work, a unique product of art and craft.
• Artisans in the handmade industry suffer due to poor work opportunities and limited reach to markets. They have also little training in strategic marketing and running a business hence the sale suffers. Handmade industry is a dying industry today and unless it is supported with enough work and skilling opportunities, it could very well fall prey to mechanization. Most skilled artisans are being pushed into informal wages sector to earn livelihood as daily wages labourers. Hunar unit will attempt to rehabilitate such artisans with sustained income and exposure to markets for their work, thereby helping them to lead a dignified life. Hunar seeks to engage grassroots artisans from poorest families.

 

For more information do visit our website at www.hunareka.in
Email: [email protected]
Seema – 9425014874
Shabnam-7898567641