CEARTE assumes itself as one of the most important resources in the sector in order to qualify, develop and perfect portuguese craftspeople, making handcraft a relevant economical, cultural and social activity. With professionals from several areas, CEARTE develops its activity in a decentralized and flexible way, expanding its intervention to specialized consultancy, to Handcraft Productive Units and to the execution of innovation, qualification and organization projects as an answer to Handcraft Productive Units and Craftspeople real needs.Most structuring measures in the sector have appeared by CEARTE’s initiative or with its active cooperation, from which we can refer: the creation of legal bases to handcraft’s system of rules (Craftspeople and Handcraft Productive Unit Statute), the current innovation projects, the craftspeople active workers training, the specialized consultancy, the creation and availability of the Handcraft Knowledge Resources Centre, and still in course, the creation of the Handcraft’s Sector Learning Regulations as well as the Handcraft Activities Sector Study, which characterizes the professional profiles involved, diagnoses the main training insufficiencies and needs and points out objective strategies that optimize vocational training in this sector.CEARTE’S mission is the answer to training needs in the Handcraft sector, either through new craftspeople qualification in strong employability areas or in areas that allow reversing the extinction process of activities with economical viability, or by developing active workers training actions contributing to enable employment initiatives and to develop the sector.With the purpose of answering Handcraft and craftspeople current challenges, CEARTE offers different training actions in areas like Pottery, Textiles, Woodworking, Photography and Multimedia, Furniture Refurbishment, Sacred Art Restoration, Paper and Bookbinding, Electricity, ITED (Building Telecommunication Infrastructures) Management, Information and Communication Technologies, Safety and Health at Work.

To improve youngsters and adults’ scholar and professional qualifications, to facilitate lifelong learning to active workers, to cooperate with companies in their modernization process and market implementation and to contribute to the development of the territories where it intervenes are the purposes of CEARTE’s work.