Art & Culture Report :
To promote crafts that appear to be disappearing in the country, the Master-craftsperson Awards were given and a four-day crafts fair jointly organised by National Crafts Council of Bangladesh (NCCB) and Bengal Foundation was held on the Bengal Shilpalaya premises in the city’s Dhanmondi area recently.
The crafts fair was inaugurated by the Cultural Affairs secretary Dr Ranjit Kumar Biswas as the chief guest, while the National Crafts Council award winner craftsperson Suchitra Sutradhar attended the occasion as a special guest.
Director General of Bengal Foundation Luva Nahid Choudhury, President of NCCB Chandra Shekhar Saha and former president of NCCB Monira Emdad also spoke at the inaugural ceremony.
This year the Master-craftsperson Awards were given to four artisans – Sangkori Tudu of Rajshahi for rural home decoration, Rafiqul Islam of Dhaka for rickshaw painting, Parveen Akhter of Noakhali for Comilla’s khadi medium and Zainal Abedin of Narsingdi for home textile. Each of the award winners received Tk 50,000 with a crest at the event.
A four-day crafts fair has also been organised. The fair continued till March 9.
Twelve stalls have different items to offer, from musical instruments to handloom saris.
The visitors at the fair also watched two workshops on making of tepa putul and shola art on the penultimate and concluding days of the fair respectively. n
