Revitalization

The Concept

IDEA CONTESTS: Our Japan Traditional Craft Revitalization Contests search for exceptional project ideas from individuals with outstanding talent, track records and passion, and provide them with a broad and significant support package.

An Opportunity to Contribute

"The contest challenged me to think bigger and more positively than I ever did before." 2021 Contest Winner

Rather than our deciding which crafts to assist, we gather proposals from highly motivated crafts people from all over Japan and choose the 10 most compelling canditates to support.

Our Judges

Reiko SUDO

Textile designer; Founder, Director and Chief Designer of NUNO Corporation; Honorary Professor at Tokyo Zokei University

須藤　玲子

テキスタイルデザイナー、株式会社布取締役、東京造形大学名誉教授

Events

The Ronnie Prize

The RONNIE Prize is awarded to the first place winner in our Japanese Traditional Craft Revitalization Contests, and consists of 5 million yen ($50,000) in project funding for the winning project aiming to revitalize a craft for the 21^st Century. The name of the prize was chosen to honor the memory of Ron Beimel, a young man who had a great passion for life and the Japanese culture and pursued his dreams with extraordinary focus, making extraordinary accomplishments during his short lifetime. We hope that the memory of this young man will inspire our contest winner to reach high and to attain their goals.

The 1st place Ronnie Prize winner receives both ¥5,000,000 ($50,000) of targeted funding toward achieving his/her vision as well as the active support of a mentor group of experts in fields such as business, design, product development, and marketing. The ten finalists become members of our Craft Leaders Council, a dynamic group of crafts people whom we support with marketing, net-working and assistance in building peer support.

We are providing the following for our current Craft Leaders Council (the ten contest finalists, including the Ronnie Prize Winner):

A bi-lingual website presence for each person to show their works and explain their craft processes.

A Showcase Gallery where each member submits a unique new work (funded by JapanCraft21) that clearly shows their talents. Those works, along with images of each member at work in their workshops, will be professionally photographed and featured on a dedicated online Showcase Gallery. This online gallery will initially be exclusively available to a select group of gallery owners, museum curators, interior designers and architects located around the world.