9 – 14 June 2025 : Bornholm Symposium 2025
A Week of Craft, Questions, and Community at Bornholm Symposium 2025
From the 9 to the 14 of June, as part of the CRAFTOUR Initiative, the teams from the different CRAFTOUR partners had the chance to spend an unforgettable few days on Bornholm—Denmark’s “craft island”—thanks to the kind invitation from Hephaestus and their partner BOFA.
It was a week filled with meaningful conversations, hands-on experiences, and deep reflections on what craft means today. One big highlight was sharing, for the first time publicly, the pillars of CRAFTOUR as well as a gathering of ideas to enrich the Policy Recommendation document. This was a huge step as we move toward presenting them to the European Commission in November 2025.
We were truly grateful for the thoughtful, honest, and sometimes challenging feedback we received—from researchers, crafts practitioners, and fellow craft advocates. It’s already helping us improve the draft and think more deeply about the direction we’re taking.
But Bornholm was more than a milestone—it was a mirror. The symposium sparked questions that don’t always have easy answers.
What made this moment even more meaningful was the opportunity to present our work to three distinct and vital audiences, each offering a different perspective on the value and future of craft:
- 🧠 PhD students and researchers, who engaged with our proposals through critical, research-informed lenses. Madina Benvenuti and Fabrizio Panozzo had lead the discussions while presenting CRAFTOUR to them. They pushed us to think deeper about the frameworks we use to define craft. One story that stood out came from Nove, Italy, where industrial ceramic work is remembered not simply as labour, but as legacy — mixing the boundaries between factory and art. This resonated deeply with our own reflections on craft as both heritage and living practice.
- 🤝 The Bornholm Symposium community, where craft professionals, policy thinkers, and cultural practitioners gathered to exchange ideas. The feedback here was practical, passionate, and grounded in lived experience. Conversations ranged from the idealisation of endangered crafts to the need for updated definitions that include emerging practices like “neo-crafts” — often linked to subcultures, but perhaps not the whole picture.
- 🗳️ The Folkemødet festival audience, where CRAFTOUR was featured in a public panel discussion. Folkemødet, Denmark’s unique democracy festival, brought our ideas into dialogue with both political leaders and everyday citizens from around Europe. It was a powerful setting to discuss how craft connects to civic life, education, sustainability, and identity, and how policy can support craft not as a remnant of the past, but as a tool for shaping the future.
Each of these audiences challenged and inspired us in different ways, and their feedback is already shaping how we revise the draft recommendations.
Bornholm reminded us that craft is never just about objects—it’s about people, memory, work, and possibility. Whether in the quiet of a studio, the intensity of academic debate, or the buzz of a public square, craft speaks. And we’re listening.
To everyone who shared your time, your thoughts, and your craft with us—thank you. This week will stay with us, long after we’ve left the island.
