CAIRO — “It felt like a diverse gallery stretched throughout an entire town — just wonderful,” exclaimed Amal Henri, who attended the eighth annual Tunis Pottery and Handcrafts Festival, held in early November.

Local and foreign tourists, many with a taste for pottery and other handcrafts, flock every year to Tunis, a small, picturesque village in Egypt’s Faiyum governorate. Today, the village is one of the stopping points of most tours in Egypt, but a mere 50 years ago, it was an untouched hamlet. In 1980s, Swiss potter Evelyn Porret opened her studio there and quickly turned it to a pottery school, the first step toward turning the village into a center for pottery and ceramics.

Porret, who still lives in the village and and continues to run her school, told Al-Monitor that the village could draw a lot more visitors. “Advertising and word of mouth by visitors need to go in parallel. Using the internet and social media for campaigns should be coupled with good feedback from the visitors to the festival.”

“It is also necessary to invite world artists to transform this festival into an international one,” she said. “In fact, the festival’s organizing committee invited world artists and offered them specific slots for their exhibitions. However, the advertisement should reach more pottery, ceramic, and handicraft artists around the world to make this festival competitive.”