Empowering Heritage Entrepreneurs: An Experience in Strategic Marketing

Abstract

This article describes an Indian experience in building rural, community-based enterprises that respond to heritage marketing challenges and opportunities in a huge creative economy. In an era often dominated by market-driven approaches, the NGO ‘banglanatak dot com’ has innovated its art for life (AFL) approach, offering a robust model for empowering rural communities through entrepreneurship and community-led micro-enterprises. Sensitive to issues of cultural integrity and ownership, the AFL model includes a strong rights-based commitment along with continuous innovation, branding and the use of marketing tools. These include building digital capacities, use of social media and partnership with the tourism industry. The banglanatak experience responds to the fast-changing consumer trends of a globalized and digital world, thus often characterized by a lack of connect between traditional artists and evolving markets, inadequate market awareness on the intrinsic and outstanding value of a particular craft or art form, lack of cultural sensitivity among stakeholders working with traditional artists and frequent violation of the creative rights of makers. This article shares learning from interventions in West Bengal, in eastern India, which aim at empowering tradition bearers as key protagonists of heritage businesses. Their experience, severely tested through the global pandemic, offers hope and direction.