by Anindita Patra

“In these unstable and uncertain times, we need to look to the things that unite us – the things that show us the world in all of its variations – and for that, we need artists” – Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General.

We turn to art when we are joyful: we turn to art when we grieve. And in times of uncertainty and despair, we turn to art again for sustaining our hopes. This is especially true of now when the pandemic continues to disrupt and alter our lives. More now than ever, art must remind us of the human capacity to endure, re-imagine and create.  While billions of people around the world turn to culture as a source of comfort and connection, the impact of COVID-19 has not spared the cultural sector threatening the livelihoods of the local communities and cultural professionals. This has impacted not only revenues but also sense of community and cultural lives of people. Artists across the world are struggling to make ends meet. In India, the crafts sector that is largely self-employed involving a large number of people has been facing a severe crisis. Similarly living traditions such as festive events that form an important part of people’s lives have had to be paused. Today, we are experiencing a cultural emergency.

Keeping these challenges in mind UNESCO New Delhi in collaboration with banglanatak dot com organized two webinars on‘Building Resilient Communities Practicing Intangible Cultural Heritage’ and ‘New Paradigms in Rural Cultural Industries’ on June 10 and June 18, respectively.  The objectives of the webinar was to raise awareness about the impact of COVID-19 on cultural and creative sector based on heritage skills in art and crafts including cultural tourism, to identify needs and challenges to be addressed through development of policies, programs and financial mechanisms aimed at empowering artists  and to share voices of ICH communities and experiences from different countries. The webinars were part of the larger global movement called ResiliArt started by UNESCO on the 15th of April 2020 which aimed at mobilizing solidarity among artists and cultural professionals.

Speakers

The webinar had panelists representing government, creative and cultural sectors, art council, tourism, and technology providers. Eric Falt, Director and UNESCO Representative to Bhutan, India, Maldives and Sri Lanka and Junhi Han, Programme Specialist and Chief of Culture Sector, UNESCO New Delhi shared about ResiliArt initiative.

‘Building Resilient Communities Practicing Intangible Cultural Heritage’

• Sreya Guha, IAS, erstwhile Principal Secretary Art & Culture and Tourism, Government of Rajasthan
• Johannes Theurer, Senior producer, Radio Berlin & Secretary, World Music Chart Europe
• Dr. Sunil Chitrakar, CEO, Mahaguthi Craft with Conscience, Nepal
• Shahid Hussain Shamim, Senior Vice President, Handicrafts Manufacturers and Exporter Association of Bangladesh – BANGLACRAFT
• Gopinath Parayil, Founder, The Blue Yonder offering cultural experience intimately connected to local communities

New Paradigms in Rural Cultural Industries

• Tarun Bansal, CEO, Arya Niwas Hotel Chain, Rajasthan
• Mr. Pankaj Manchanda, Founder and CEO, Augtraveler offering augmented reality based multimedia solutions offering heritage tourism experience
• Dr.Debanjan Chakrabarti, Director, Eastern and North Eastern India, British Council India
• Ms. Neelam Chhiber, Co-founder and Managing Trustee, Industree Foundation organizing creative manufacturing ecosystem for micro entrepreneurs
• Mr. Sanjoy Roy, Co-founder and Managing Director, Teamwork Arts developing festivals across the globe.

The panelists discussed various problems that the artist communities are facing due to the pandemic. The social and economic impact on culture and creative industries will be severe and these sectors, like many others, will need support across their respective ecosystems and supply chains. The crafts sector in India, one of the largest employment sectors after agriculture in rural India, is in a severe crisis affecting livelihoods of millions of craftspeople in rural areas and thousands of craft enterprises. Similarly, the arts sector is also under huge pressure being informally organized with artists and professionals working on temporary contracts, lack of funding and lack of adequate protection of artists’ works especially in the digital sphere. Creative industries like craft collectives, village tourism, cultural festivals which support the tradition bearers and practitioners are threatened with challenges of decline in demand owing to factors like decline in tourist flows, less disposable income of consumers and restrictions in cultural and social gatherings.

But as they say, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The panelists agreed that we need to find ways to keep cultural professionals doing their work safely and to be able to monetize their work we need to build solid cultural policies to give artists, creators and cultural enterprises the means to move forward. One of the big challenges facing the creative sector in the developing countries as we emerge from this pandemic will be the restructuring of the cultural sector. Regenerative economy is the need of the hour and instead of calling this sector craft we call it creative manufacturing as it is about production, competitiveness. Craft should not be limited to a curio item but treated as a production model or rather participatory ownership model.

The discussion emphasized the importance of solidarity for artists and creators. If we try looking at the ‘oh so little’ bright things of the otherwise dark crisis we will see that it has the potential to bring together the cultural industry, to start a dialogue, to collaborate and exchange, to create a rock solid networking platform. Hand holding amongst the stakeholders of the creative industry will be really helpful in such times.

A particular concern raised by the panelists was the rapid trend toward the digitization of cultural content which is indeed a good means for the artists to reach out to the audience. But a lot of the rural artists are not equipped to quickly jump into the online world, because of the remoteness, insufficient access to digital technologies and language issues. The importance of vigilance and stronger regulation amidst the current push for digitization cultural content was particularly stressed. The fact that so much is moving online and artists are sharing their work for free brings challenges as well.

When emerging from this crisis, ways to maintain diverse, sustainable and dynamic cultural ecosystems must be identified and reinforced. Panelists underscored that the ramifications of the crisis will be felt long after it ends, and called for the protection of artists and for fair remuneration of their work both now and in the long term.

The discourse that we read and see in the media understandably focuses on the negative impact but there are positive opportunities as well– opportunities for contributing and collaborating and ones which may lead to new innovations. Sustainable business models during and after the initial crisis are vital for the sector’s survival. The current challenge is to design public supports that assuage the negative impacts in the short term and help identify new opportunities in the medium term for different public, private and non-profit actors engaged in cultural and creative production and not to forget initiatives that ultimately benefit the communities. The discussion reflected the need to re-imagine the cultural sector as it adapts to the new normal brought about by the crisis.

We realize that during these times projects will need fresh modes of thinking, creating and presenting the arts as well as new imaginations of engagement with audiences and communities.

 Role of Social Media Influencers in Promoting Cultural Products

by Anindita Patra

Today social media platforms have become an important tool to promote products and services. Social media marketing is inexpensive when compared to the traditional ways of advertisement, reaches out to a wider audience and is fast in its response. By using social media, brands have the chance to create a strong media presence by interacting with customers online, this can also help to strengthen brand perception by communicating core values to a wider audience.

With social media platforms taking the centre stage in the world of marketing we often hear the term ‘social media influencers’. So, who are these influencers? An influencer is someone with the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her ‘authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience’. An influencer has a digital following in a distinct niche, with whom he or she actively engages.  Over the last decade, we have seen social media grow rapidly in importance. According to the January 2019 We Are Social report, 3.484 billion people actively use social media – that’s 45% of the world’s population. Inevitably these people look up to influencers in social media to guide them with their decision making.

Over the years we have seen these influencers create campaigns for fashion, beauty, travel, lifestyle. With the world becoming more aware about sustainability we find a lot influencers promoting sustainable living, home grown products, small local businesses. Keeping these in mind as a part of the HIPAMS project we decided to take the plunge of involving social media influencers with a little push from our colleague and marketing expert Dr. Diego Rinallo from Kedge Business School, France in order to promote Bengal Patachitra.

Promotion of cultural products by social media influencers is not a common sight especially in India.   Mapping a strategy to involve influencers rather the ‘correct’ influencers with a campaign that would not only try to sell the craft products but at the same time create awareness about the art form, the artists, their rights, the heritage aspects of the art form was a challenge.

We had to be extra careful while choosing the influencers we wanted to work with, keeping in mind our target audience. After much research we reached out to influencers who promoted sustainable fashion, home décor with traditional art pieces, small businesses, cultural products, rural tourism on their respective pages. Influencers with different followership were approached though focus was more on the micro influencers with followers less than 10k. Micro influencers with their less followership have higher engagement, niche audience and is cost effective.

Other factors like deciding on the storyline of the promotion, the timeline of the posts, type of content, scope of enganement with the audience had to be kept in mind as well. Diwali is an important festival in India where people buy new clothes and gifts, clean and redo their houses. So, we launched our social media campaign during Diwali in the year 2020 with the message to rethink fashion and gifting choices and support local artists going with the trending #vocalforlocal, #supportart, #supportartist campaigns that were already doing the rounds in the country. The influencers posted on how to drape a Patachitra saree for Diwali parties or how to decorate the house with Patachitra pieces like kettles and coasters. 84 Bongully, an Instagram creator beautifully adorned garments with Patachitra motifs to create festive looks for their follwers whereas influencer Sharmistha Guha Chowdhury made a video on how one can use Patachitra products to add a festive touch to their house décor. An young fashion influencer sported Tshirt with Patachitra motifs and gave out the message to her millennial followers on how to make traditional art look ‘cool’.We kept in mind to not only promote the products but also the artist, the process and the place where it came from. So along with every post the influencers mentioned about the art form, the artist who painted it and about his/her village. The campaign was a success as the Patachitra artists received orders from people who came across the Instagram posts of Patachitra by the influencers.

The second phase of the campaign was held during World Heritage Week in November, 2020 and focussed on creating awareness about the heritage aspects of the traditional art form. For this phase of the promotion influencers like art photographers, policy advocates, environmentalists were utilized. For example, the ace photographer Upahar Biswas made a video explaining why it is important to mention the name of the art form and artist while sharing photos of Patachitra products. The heritage aspects of Patachitra like Pater Gaan (songs accompanying the scroll paintings), natural colour making process were shared along with information on GI (Geographical Indication) registration, Craftmark, the village as a cultural hub, community museum. The audience engagement during this phase of the promotion was very encouraging.

During the month-long promotion three short videos, 22 posts and around 30 stories were shared by the influencers on their respective pages. The videos have received around 3000 views; each post on average had received 350 likes. The influencers who worked with us on the promotion of Bengal Patachitra were happy about the campaign and the response they received. They said that cultural products have a huge market out there and it just requires the correct branding to reach the customers.

Do visit our Instagram page to get glimpses of the beautiful campaigns: https://www.instagram.com/hipams.india/