Baguio was named a UNESCO creative city. Where are the millennials?

It takes 20 minutes for Celso Velasco to ply a chain bracelet from a thin silver wire. The tedious process is shortened to 10 minutes if he doesn’t stop for tobacco and coffee. He and his friend, who worked with a soldering iron to painstakingly melt and weave an intricate silver cord while wasting as little of the precious metal as possible, sat on a workbench provided to them, lighted only by a single, but powerful, halogen lamp. His granddaughters, no older than seven years old, tiptoed beside their grandfather to get a closer look of how quickly he cut and looped the silver wire.

“For me this is like playing,” Velasco told SparkUp in the vernacular, never looking up—perhaps the reason why he has developed a slight stoop. “It stimulates my mind and I enjoy making different designs.” A Baguio native, he learned from his grandfather, who learned from his father, who learned from his father before him, and so forth. Perhaps they didn’t have the same tools as he has now, and designs come and go, but the heritage is something that gets stronger with time. Or weaker.

For the young, Baguio is a comfortable mix of city and pine forest that makes it a romantic backdrop for soul searchers and the nomadic alike, who seek inspiration up the mountains—the second on the list of top Airbnb destinations for Filipinos this Valentine’s week.

But for aged craftsmen like Velasco, Baguio is more than that: it is a place that has been included in the 180‑member UNESCO Creative Cities Network under the craft and folk art category: a recognition that links Baguio to other art hubs around the world.

From February 11‑24, the summer capital is host to the Baguio City Creative Hub: an event featuring around 20 booths for weaving, basketry, jewelry painting and visual art products from Baguio and the Cordillera artisans. It’s a big deal—the official logo was even rendered by National Artist for Painting Benedicto “Bencab” Cabrera.

Yet underneath this success is an obvious void: few millennials in the sea of seniors manning the booth.

“They’re not interested anymore,” Velasco lamented about today’s generation. “Kids these days are more interested in their gadgets and their computers. Back then we would help with our fathers in their shops. I don’t know if our children will—” he trails off and his friend laughs grimly.

“Now the youth are just interested in watching us work, maybe they’ll touch the silver and try it out for a while, but then they leave,” he added. Silver work, however, is not a craft that one can just pick‑up and learn. Training is needed, just like how Velasco was trained by his grandfather.

Photo Lucia Edna P. de Guzman

This poses a very real risk not only to the craftsmen but also to the entrepreneurs that sell their crafts. Lucia Capuyan‑Catanes, director of the iconic Narda’s Handwoven Arts and Crafts and daughter of the shop founder Narda Capuyan, spoke for the weavers that they source their fashionable shawls and bags from. Draped in traditionally woven shawls, Catanes recalled how Narda’s was born when her mother, who moved to the Cordillera’s to teach reproductive health, struck a partnership with the weavers. She will sell their crafts in the city for a profit, and the women, encouraged to earn their own money, will hopefully not be pressured into getting pregnant again by their husbands.

“The youth today prefer to work at call centers or become overseas Filipino workers (OFWs),” explained Catanes, when asked about the future of their business. “We’re encouraging the young to take up the craft of weaving and sewing. If you find a good livelihood here then you don’t have to leave your families behind anymore, as opposed to becoming an OFW.”

“There should be more focus and respect for the artisans,” she added. “And they also need higher, competitive wages to what they would earn if they went abroad.”

She hopes that the recognition from UNESCO will be beneficial for Baguio. “It will boost the handicraft industry,” Catanes said. “And it will put focus on the artisans, the weavers, the artists, that’s one of the advantages.”

The intervention of a third party to sell the goods to the tourists that mostly come from outside the city province also serves an additional purpose: to get past the language barrier. SparkUp attempted to interview a weaver, who worked silently with a traditional waist‑strapped loom. She looked up from her work, smiled apologetically, and then nodded to the booth managers, who explained that the middle‑aged woman could speak neither English nor Tagalog.

Siegfried—just Siegfried, he says—a man in a blue hoodie who manned a souvenir blade shop during the event, works for WOW Banaue Souvenirs. Wow Banaue Souvenirs sources its products from the communities in Banaue, Ifugao.

For the blades, Siegfried explained that they get them from a panday (blacksmith) that they know. However, he worries that the panday might not have found someone to pass his craft to. There might come a time that all the blades he was selling—short but menacing daggers, short swords in wooden scabbards carved with skulls and other dangerous insignia, and a single, simple broadsword that was more expensive because it’s a traditional blade—might come at short supply. Perhaps someday, there will be no supply at all.

“This is good news for the creative arts,” said Siegfried when asked about Baguio’s latest accolade. “This favors our products because these are creative works.”

But he also warns against bunching all souvenirs and arts together under one blanket label, or mistaking one province for the other.

“There are books and articles that say that this item is from Ifugao, this item is from Benguet, but don’t verify if it’s true,” he said. Despite how Siegfried’s blades from Ifugao do not seem that out of place next to displays from Benguet, proper attribution is important in highlighting the skill of the artisan.

Photo Lucia Edna P. de Guzman

Meanwhile, Ariel Layugan stands at the crossroads between the entrepreneur and the craftsman, as a craftsman who sells his own works.

A self‑identified millennial, he stood next to where his carved bone jewelry was displayed on top of a gnarled piece of wood for contrast, proudly wearing a necklace, ring, and neckerchief that he himself carved. A friend had taught him how to carve wood, a traditional art that the Cordilleras is known for, and he incorporates those techniques into his own work—serpents, lizards, the bulol (an Ifugao rice diety), and various fertility symbols are carved on to bone scraps that people would mostly throw away (like hooves and left‑overs from bulalo).

“Before, people thought art was merely a way to augment your finances, which is true,” said the artist on the effect of recognition on the business of selling crafts. “Now that we’re recognized, we have to work further on our crafts so that we can compete against what’s sold in other countries without losing our standard.”

“Many people think that crafts are cheap, things that you sell on sidewalks, but now I hope they recognize that crafts isn’t something that should be belittled,” Layugan said, passionate in defending his fellow artisans. “The artist gives a lot of thought to his craft, and that plays a big part. It shouldn’t be belittled, because the artist gave a lot of time and went through a lot of trial‑and‑error before he can create a piece.”

Baguio, as a UNESCO recognized creative city, now has the duty to keep the folk arts alive.

“We challenge other cities to be more creative,” Tourism Undersecretary Marco Bautista said during the unveiling of the Baguio City Creative Hub at the Malcolm Square, popularly known as the People’s Park. “Baguio City is the first and hopefully there will be second, third, and more cities that will be recognized by UNESCO in the creative arts and other fields of the recognition.”

Meanwhile, we, the younger generation, who have benefitted from the teachings of our elders are, in the words of aged craftsmen like Velasco, satisfied with merely watching.