The second weekend of September marked the Craft Design Exhibition organized by the project Culture for All, funded by EU. This exhibition was organized after an assessment of craft work produced in Kosovo, conducted by Caroline Winckel French designer and trainer.
     In December 2013, Ms. Winckel held an intensive training for 23 women artisans and designers from all regions of Kosovo focusing on giving their products a creative touch.
At the end of this training, each participant defined a new product line for the coming 4-6 month period. The new products concerned fashion accessories, items and home decoration objects and were displayed in the exhibition organized at Zahir Pajazit Square in Prishtina until 14 September.
     “Every exhibition organized is important for women from Kosovo because it is the only place where they can display their work, and benefit from it financially,” said Selvete Gashi from NGO Lulebora, an organization that participated in the exhibition, and simultaneously a KWNmember organization.
     Winckel will select a range of products which best combine craftsmanship, creativity and design and present them at the “Creativity Pavilion” that will also host creations from other countries such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France and Turkey.
     “The importance of this activity has many aspects: first, the economic one that allows the ladies to live decently from their art; the second is cultural, to give more value and contemporary creativity to handicrafts and to traditional values; also, socially speaking because we consider that handicrafts is one of the art sectors that link people together because of the common memory and the ways of lives,” said Lila Skarveli, Team Leader at Culture for All. “So we insist very much on giving the culture its social and economic role in Kosovo society like everywhere, and we think that following the evaluation we have done on crafts and on creative industry in Kosovo, this is a very promising sector and it is worth it to promote and support it.”  
     Additionally, a selected number of the participants in this exhibition will take part in a study tour in Paris that will take place at the end of this year. 
     The main aim of the project Culture for All is to increase the development of the cultural sector in Kosovo, aiming towards the social and economic development of the country.