‘Catalyst Institute’ as a Bridge Between Craftsmen and Markets In Indonesian Craft Industry

Abstract

The need of design in developing our craft industry has been recognized since a few years ago. The government has undertaken several programmes to increase the awareness. One of the programmes is DDO (Design Development Organization). This organization is a cooperation between Indonesia and Japan government through an agency called JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency). Another programme that has been undertaken by our government is a design center programme that is developed by the Ministry of Industry of the Republic of Indonesia. Unfortunately, only a few of these programmes are running on an ongoing basis. Most of the programmes have already been stopped. The reason of this failure is because these programmes, that were established by the government, were only considered as projects of the government. The programmes did not include the community in the implementation. Therefore, the implementation was not ongoing. On the other hand, the new designs received from the design center were not followed by marketing process. As a result, the craftsmen did not continue to produce products with new designs. In fact, they prefer to continue making products with old designs. For this reason, it is necessary to build a system that can meet the needs of craftsmen of new designs and also help them to sell these new products in a more systematic way. This system can be managed in the catalyst institution. The catalyst institution is a business institution that was built in the community in cooperation with other agencies to support this organization to develop itself.

Keywords: Craftsman, Craft Leader, Outsiders, Catalyst institution