On the eve of its press launch and first major event, the HCA is featured in this fantastic and thought-provoking write up by Jon Henley in the Guardian:'"I'd estimate that more people in the world today eat with stainless steel knives and forks than speak English," says Robin Wood, chair of a newly formed lobby group, the Heritage Crafts Association, which is being launched today [Tuesday, 23 March 2010] at the Victoria & Albert Museum. "You could argue it's our biggest cultural export. So it seems quite extraordinary that we can protect the bricks and mortar of a place like this, but not care in the least about the skills and craftsmanship that are so much of this city's culture and identity."
'Modern Britain, it seems, is not much fussed about the skills and knowledge that exist only in the minds, eyes and hands of people who make things – our living vernacular heritage. We like them, in a rose-tinted, nostalgic kind of way, but we don't do much to support them.
'"And yet," says Wood, "they're every bit as much a part of our cultural heritage as grand museums, fine buildings and admired works of art or literature." They helped, too, make us who we are: how many people in this country bear the name Smith? Or Cooper, Turner, Cutler, Wright?'
Read more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/22/heritage-crafts-at-risk.
You can also see a collection of Jon Henley's 'Disappearing Acts' slides, compiled to coincide with the HCA press launch.
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