Repositioning Traditional Crafts and Industries for Tourism Development and Promotion in Ukpordocx

Right from time, man has produced and used many materials and other devices to survive from the precarious environment he found himself. Most of these cultural implements were initially geared towards the procurement of food, shelter and protection. Thus, the gradual movement from the use of wooden objects to the production of stone and finally iron and metal objects. This gradual and evolutionary process has been referred to archaeologically as the stone and the iron/metal ages. Consequently, the production and acquisition of these tools enhanced man‟s living and gave him an added advantage over the lower primates.
This process continued till date and has been professionally referred to as Arts and Crafts. This entails the production of cultural materials through wood work, ceramics/clay, textile, stone, metals, etc. Presently, workshops both locally and mechanized are set up for this purpose and this arts, which was formally meant for the production of mainly domestic tools and hence, serving domestic purposes is having a dramatic and enthusiastic dimension.
Local crafts and traditional industries apart from playing its initial roles as earlier mentioned now play both aesthetic and tourism roles as they today form part of the tourist potentials, which can be harnessed for tourism development and promotion within the area of study.