The Heritage Crafts Association has been working hard to raise the profile of traditional crafts in the past few months. On Tuesday (23 March 2010), it is holding a forum and press launch event at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to consolidate the support it has received so far, and to focus attention of its efforts to campaign to keep traditional crafts alive and flourishing in the future. Due to high demand, both of these events are now fully booked up.
The morning forum will play host to representatives of organisations representing a diverse range of crafts including basketmaking, pole lathe turning, pottery, calligraphy, woodcarving, feltmaking, lacemaking, upholstery, weaving, blacksmithing and many more. Under discussion will be the importance of traditional crafts and why they should be promoted, the issues that face traditional crafts today and how these differ across different disciplines, and, finally, how craftspeople can work together to ensure that traditional craft skills survive and flourish in the future.
The official press launch will take place in the afternoon, with journalists from publications such as Crafts magazine, craft&design, Country Life and The Guardian. There will be working craftspeople showing off their skills to invited guests including politicians from the Lords and Commons, craft consultants from funding agencies and trusts, and the Chief Executives of the Crafts Council, Craft NI, craftscotland and The Makers' Guild in Wales, amongst many others, including most of the BBC Mastercrafts mentors and the producers of both the TV series and accompanying book.
Also on Tuesday, the HCA will be launching its Friends' Scheme, allowing supporters to take a more active role in the organisation but signing up as a Friend and paying a small annual subscription of £12. This is intended as a very cost-effective way of supporting the Association - the HCA will not spend this money on expensive membership benefits, nor will it spend much time and money actively recruiting. Rather, it hopes that support will spread as it has done so far by word-of-mouth. Friends will get a chance to vote at General Meetings of the charity, as well as receiving priority invitations to future events.
Reports and photographs from Tuesday's events will be published here in the coming week. The Friends' page will go live on the HCA website on Tuesday.
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