Craftsmanship: A renovated way of making and marketing a job

Is it possible for craftsmanship to survive today? And how? These are the questions from which this work moves. Everyone can see the objective difficulties that small production and manufacturing realities have to deal with today. This is something that was bothering me personally, and as my professor has always used to say, if something bothers you it is because it’s important. And it might be important also for others. Therefore I thought about my Italy and all the incredible heritage of craftsmen and craft skills we have and we are getting to lose. I met in my past some cases that led me to reflect upon this issue, the conditions and problems that create a limit for craftsmanship today and make difficult for it to survive. I wondered: how could it be possible? How could it be that we don’t mind about loosing something so precious, a richness for our economy and a powerful resource and potential for the future? Thus I decided to dedicate my master thesis to investigate my questions and look for a viable solution to this issue. This thesis develops with a non-typical approach as an experimental research that builds up and takes shape during the process. It starts from a questioning and investigation around the concept of craftsmanship, its meaning and authenticity for then moving on to gather interesting insights from real cases and life experiences. After a first approach though the literature, I analysed successful cases and stories with a critical approach to find relevant insights. In many passages of the process I was also inspired by events of my personal experience, that I used to frame a new scheme of reference to look at my issue. I found that craftsmanship is about the “how”, the specific way of doing something in a certain way. It is, in the end, about realising one’s own values through an activity. This led me to investigate how it is possible to valorise craftsmanship, where valorisation means specifically to realise the values behind that activity. This consideration connects to a reflection on the theme of education and how education can help in creating the premises and best conditions for a valorisation of craftsmanship, both as a manufacturing activity and a broader concept of making a job in a certain way. At this point the research met my personal and professional experience and I introduced in the thesis a disquisition on how communicating at the outside a professional’s values enables people to attract the resources and contribution required to realise their projects. The result of this long process of research is a new way to look at craftsmanship. It is not only something dealing with a manufacturing activity, but a way broader concept that can be applied to an any kind of activity and deals with the realisation of one’s values behind that activity. Adopting a value based approach to look at the issue, this thesis becomes an address to the entire job market and world. It is about bringing back an idea of craftsmanship into our economy and working life in general, and make it the strength and starting point of a new way of making and marketing a job, where values and economy are synthesised in a renovated and innovative way.