The growth of tourism in Lapland creates a need for new expertise. Today tourists wish to acquaint themselves with the local culture, support sustainability, experience new things, and explore the local handicraft and design products. This is enabled by handicraft-based tourism that has potential owing to its multidimensionality: Handicraft provides tourists with things to do, to see, to feel and, in particular, to experience and to learn.
The vision in Lapland’s tourism development is to enhance business collaboration and service production. This can be accomplished through business-oriented training, which is addressed by the project at hand. The main objective of the Handmade in Lapland project is to develop the skills of handicraft worker and entrepreneurs in enhancing their products and services according to the needs of the tourism business. The project aims to advance the following: the tourism expertise of handicraft workers, knowledge of the field of tourism, productization skills, product targeting, and the creation of innovative tourism services and souvenirs. Another main objective is to develop the continuing and basic education supply of the University of Lapland to meet the need for new expertise in the tourism industry. The primary target group consists of handicraft workers who are interested in tourism and self-employment in Lapland.
The project will bring together the interests of both handicraft workers and entrepreneurs and tourists. It will create a 15-credit continuing education programme in handicraft tourism and an electronic productization and sales handbook of handicraft tourism. In terms of the main results, the project will develop the expertise of local handicraft workers and entrepreneurs and thereby strengthen the economy. The continuing education programme will develop the handicraft entrepreneur networks, increase collaboration, and enhance the opportunities to share expertise.
