Indian Craft Skills for Students to Build an Online Brand

India's handicraft space is vast and varied, with 67 craft categories, 455 subcategories, and 318 GI products. At the grassroots level, there are over 3000 local traditional crafts thriving, supporting 64.6 to 68.8 lakh artisans. But what does this mean for you, the student? The great thing about handicrafts is that you do not need to put your formal education in a design institute or get a degree in crafts to learn practical skills. By working in the evenings, during weekends and school vacations with local artisans, you can learn valuable physical skills to set up a bright future ahead for yourself.

The Learning Power of Late Afternoons and Vacations

Indian traditional craft learning never stressed the confines of the classroom. A beginner would sit cross-legged on the floor, beside the master craftsman, watching him grind natural colors, and would learn by osmosis. You can engage in the time-honored tradition by trying out evening lessons or after-school coaching directly from artisans in handicrafts. Spending two hours every evening or learning six hours on every holiday would see you mastering a few crafts over a couple of years:

• Your regular formal classes do not get interrupted: you still attend the classes during the day, and come back to a real workshop in the evenings or during the long vacations.
• Being hands-on, you learn how to work with materials in practical ways, for example, knowing when the brass metal is cooling enough to carve.
• The tactile experiences of working with real materials, especially clay, are rich in sensory feedback that is not found in textbooks.
• The master-craftsman is willing to teach his skill set to a young and eager learner who respects the art and has the determination to show up and learn, again and again.
• Often, it is the personal connection and human bond that the master creates with the pupil, passing on tricks of the trade that have been in practice for hundreds of years.

What You Can Actually Make for Yourself in the Future

Learning a skill outside of class does not mean being cheap labor for some exploitative factory owner. If you are a student with a smartphone in 2024 and have learned to master a physical skill, there are options for you:

1. The Student Micro-Business

A high school or college student learning leather tooling, block printing, or pottery during their evenings or vacations can start with a small-scale production of handcrafted goods. Selling notebooks, small pieces of pottery, or metal art to friends, at local events, and online can make you some money in the evenings while studying. By the time you graduate from school or college, you have your first real business experience and a steady income stream ahead.

2. Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) Brands

Most established master-craftsmen do not know how to sell their goods in the modern economy. A typical day for the master-craftsman is spent working alongside his family at the weaving loom or at the anvil. A student who spends his evenings working in the master's workshop can actually understand the mindset of an artisan. The student can then go ahead and create a direct-to-consumer niche brand with the artisan family, helping them sell their work ethically online and in curated markets.

3. Custom Work and Jobs

Architects, interior designers, hotel owners, and cafe owners are always looking for custom jobs. If you have any skills in traditional painting styles (Warli, Madhubani, Cheriyal, Kalamkari) or even sculpting in clay, you can take up weekend jobs painting large feature walls. Alternatively, learning local handicrafts such as hand-weaving or painting woodwork can see you taking up custom work for furniture.

4. Online Sales & Supporting Master Artisans

A computer-savvy student spends their evenings at the workshop, learning age-old techniques and capturing them on camera for global online audiences. You can provide a home and fair pay to a master artisan by taking photos of their work and posting them online, and you can help preserve generations-old traditions. Eliminate exploitative middlemen and price-fixing by bringing a master’s work to an online audience that will give him or her both the respect and compensation due.

5. Your Products in the Future

After months of learning their craft, you can strike out on your own. You can produce a line of home goods or other products based on what you’ve learned. With your skills and access to online markets, you can sell your own products online, bypassing traditional retail markups and price-fixing cartels.

6. A Healthy Ditch for Stress

After a stressful week of exams, working with wood to make simple clay pots can be extremely grounding. Making small pottery requires focus and presence of mind, which makes it a good exercise for students. The ability to focus deeply on the task at hand translates to better skills at whatever you do. Working with your hands also helps you visualize better, an important skill for architects, engineers, and artists.

How to Get Started: A Practical Evening Routine

Students interested in exploring the world of physical handicrafts can begin by:

Finding the local cluster or workshop

Most cities have a group of potters (called kumhars), metal casters, handloom weavers, carpenters, or even people who embroider. Just show up at their workshop and help out with whatever small jobs they ask you. Keep the place, collect some clay, tie the bundles of threads, or whatever task they give you.

Commit to small time-slices every week

6 pm to 7.30 pm on weekdays or 4 hours on a Sunday morning is a good starting point. Over 6-12 months, you will have mastered the basics of a couple of crafts.

First, learn the materials

The first step to mastering a handicraft is to get to know the materials. Learn how to make a mix of clay, for example, or how to dye cotton with natural vegetable dyes. Knowing the materials helps you know intuitively when the clay needs more water or when the dye is ready to be used on the fabric. Knowing your tools helps you keep them in good working condition so that they last longer.

Use the long vacations for practicing

During school breaks, Diwali vacations, and summer holidays, you can practice with the materials or finish a big project you started earlier in the year.

Conclusion

A student who balances regular academic studies with learning handicrafts in the evenings and on vacations has two important skills: academic smarts and practical life skills that set them up for a financially independent future.