Abstract
In recent years, Japan’s silk industry has been in a steady decline due to an aging workforce and a lack of successors. To address this issue, it is essential to establish an industry–academia–government consortium in which organizations involved in the silk industry can work together to examine current challenges.
This paper focuses on the project “Advocating the Role of silk Art and Cultural heritage at National and European scale” (ARACNE), a collaboration among silk industry-related organizations in Europe. ARACNE was established in 2023 mainly by the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) in Italy, with funding from the European Union’s research and innovation program “Horizon Europe.” Designed to revitalize the silk industry, ARACNE works with silk-related manufacturing companies, research organizations, and educational institutions to build an ecosystem in Europe through information collection and educational activities focused on the cultural heritage of the European silk industry.
This paper summarizes the activities of ARACNE and the background of its establishment and considers the possibility of establishing an industry–academia–government consortium in the Japanese silk industry.
