The Alliance for Artisan Enterprise, a collaboration between the Aspen Institute and the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues for the U.S. Department of State, is a global platform to promote artisan enterprises with a specific focus on women artisans and their families. Over the past three years the Alliance has grown to over 60 members including artisan businesses, artisan support organizations, corporations, foundations, NGOs, international organizations, and governments.
To scale the impact of the Alliance, the U.S. Department of State will launch the Global Campaign for the artisan sector on September 10, 2015. The event will provide a combination of high visibility media engagement, high level speakers, innovative solution-finding sessions, and a multimedia competition to engage a wide variety of audiences to scale artisan initiatives.
Dr. Manuel Montoya has been invited to speak at the campaign launch. Dr. Montoya is passionately committed to the growth of artisan enterprise. This summer, he and a group of students from IBSG traveled to Rio de Janeiro to present a proposal to Rio's Olympic committee in support of the establishment of a folk art market during the Games in order to sustain traditional arts and boost the local economy. Dr. Montoya will be speaking on the general significance of the creative economy as a part of the world economy, and then will talk about the Olympic folk art market concept developed by IBSG.
Congratulations to Dr. Montoya!
