Branislav Jelenčík
We survived the year 2000, even 2012, when the world was supposed to come to an end, and those who were children at the time are now adults. A positive fact is that despite damage to the ecosystem, much still remains of what makes our life valuable and beautiful; folk art and crafts are no exception. However, what will be the situation look like in years to come? Do skilled hands, traditional materials and technologies fine-tuned over millennia have a chance of survival? In 2050, will a ten-year-old girl hug a lady bent over her embroidery with the words: “Grandma, how do you do it? Will you teach me?”
Although it may appear that there will be a problem with future generations, people are sometimes truly surprised by predictions. Do you remember those popular news articles about ebook readers around ten years ago? What future did they predict? Today, printed books were supposed to be a thing of the past, a marginal item for lovers of nostalgia. However, the opposite is true. Will crafts experience the same relation between people and values? Will crafts survive the year 2050, or even 3000? I will try to estimate the future of traditional crafts intuitively based on human needs.