Meisterrat Prize

With the Meisterrat Prize 2024, the Meisterrat honors outstanding innovation projects from the world of creative craftsmanship.

The prize aims to highlight the innovativeness and willingness to transform of craftspeople, design studios and manufacturers. It aims to help raise social awareness of the innovative power of quality craftsmanship.

The aim of the Meisterrat Award is to address the question of how a quality-conscious and sustainable economy, which is well networked with the structures of the market and its technological possibilities, is currently being practiced and could look in the near future.

Goals

Situated between tradition and innovation, the Master Craftsmen’s Council Prize aims to be an award for the excellent combination of cultural knowledge about the cultural heritage of craft techniques with material properties and forward-looking sustainable production. The prize thus combines the highest quality of design and craftsmanship with the demands of technical and social innovation. The Meisterrat Prize pursues several goals:

Promoting cooperation

The Meisterrat Prize aims to bring crafts, design and manufacturing together and thus make forward-looking partnerships possible.

Offering orientation

Through the labeling, the Meisterrat Award aims to provide orientation and offer high-quality and regionally produced alternatives to common industrial products.

Supporting start-ups

Future viability through innovation is a central concern of the prize. Accordingly, the prize aims to support the founding of new companies that are characterized by craftsmanship and design.

The awarding of the Meisterrat prize — open to all areas of manufacturing design — aims to make the rich heritage of manufacturing visible and, in particular, to encourage young talent.

Categories

Prizes are awarded to winners in three categories:

Young Talent — Start Up — Tradition

The “Young Talent” category honors individuals who enrich the artistic craft in a particularly innovative way.
The “Start-up” category recognizes smaller companies that are no more than three years old and add outstanding, novel facets to the manufacturing landscape.
The “Tradition” category honors more established manufactories that combine tradition and future technologies or innovative production methods and processes in a forward-looking way.

Nomination

It is not possible to apply for the Meisterrat prize.

- Nominations can only be made by third parties; self-nominations are excluded.

- There are no participation or processing fees for nominees or nominators.

- Nominees do not have to pay for the application and award.

- The competition is held in Berlin and Brandenburg.

- The competition is cross-industry.

- The competition criteria are not only based on turnover or jobs, but also consider the company as a whole and its role as a driver of innovation in society.

Competition criteria

Both companies and individuals are evaluated in their entirety and at the same time in their role as drivers of innovation within society; the sensible adaptation of technological solutions as well as social or aesthetic aspects also play a role in the evaluation.

1. overall development

2. digital innovativeness

3. sustainable production and choice of materials

4. commitment to the region

5. Design level of the brand image

Procedure

Maufactures from all sectors, independent design studios or craftspeople can be nominated by institutions, organizations, chambers, associations, clubs, municipalities, companies and personalities until 31 January 2024. Anonymous nominations and self-nominations will be rejected.
Nominations received will be checked by the Master Craftsmen’s Council for compliance with the competition requirements.
The jury deliberates at the headquarters of the Meisterrat e.V. in Berlin. It evaluates the nominated manufactories according to a multi-stage procedure. The annually renewed “Nomination List” contains all nominations confirmed by the Master Craftsmen’s Council for a competition year. The “jury list”, which is renewed annually, contains all competition participants on which the jurors deliberate. The “awards list” contains all competition participants who have been recognized as award winners.

Upcoming dates

January 31, 2024:
Nomination deadline

April 7, 2024:
Announcement of the nominees

April 14, 2024:
Jury meeting

April 21, 2024:
Announcement of the jury list

May 16, 2024:
Award ceremony

Weitere Beiträge

Study: Manufakturen-Atlas 2025

[:de]Im Rahmen der Studie „Manufakturen-Atlas 2025“ werden die aktuellen Begriffsbestimmungen in Bezug auf manufakturielle Produktion zusammengefasst. Ziel ist es, die Manufakturen und solchen Unternehmen, die als nicht-industrielle Wirtschaftsakteure gesehen werden können, zu beschreiben, zu quantifizieren und schließlich Vorhersagen zu treffen, wie die deutschen Manufakturen auf die Herausforderungen der Globalisierung und Digitalisierung reagieren können.[:en]The study "Manufakturen-Atlas 2025" summarizes the current definitions with regard to manufactory production. The aim is to describe and quantify manufactories and companies that can be seen as non-industrial economic actors, and finally to predict how German manufactories can react to the challenges of globalization and digitization.[:]

Company portrait: Hasenkopf

[:de]Der Begriff Manufaktur bleibt auch für den Meisterrat zwiespältig, weil er einen historischen Kontext suggeriert, die für die meisten Unternehmen gar nicht mehr zutrifft. Vor allem solche Unternehmen, die einen hohen Anteil an Handarbeit aufweisen, aber gleichzeitig hochtechnisiert arbeiten, müssen mit diesem begrifflichen Spagat leben, der die eigene Leistungen nicht mehr adäquat beschreibt.[:en]The term manufactory remains ambivalent for the Master Council just as well, because it suggests a historical context that no longer applies to most companies. Especially those companies that have a high percentage of manual work but at the same time are highly technical have to live with this conceptual balancing act, which no longer adequately describes their own performance.[:]