HCA survey of craftspeople

In December 2009, the HCA posted a survey for traditional craftspeople. It was publicised specifically to craftspeople who had already shown support for the HCA, as well as more publicly on the HCA website and other websites. The survey closed on 28 February 2010 with 206 respondents.

One of the most interesting outcomes of the survey was that 53 per cent of respondents stated that they believed that skills within their craft were in danger of dying out.

Click here to view a summary of the report (PDF, 29kb). For a full transcript of the responses, please contact us.

The word cloud below shows the most common words in all of the responses to the survey (the larger the word the more often it occurred - click here for a closer view):

Preview to the HCA forum and press launch

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.

Prof Edward Collins becomes a patron of HCA

The Heritage Crafts Association is very pleased to welcome Professor EJT Collins as a patron. Prof Collins major publication 'Crafts in the English Countryside' is the most in depth recent research into traditional crafts in the UK and is highly recomended reading.

One of the key recommendations of the 2004 report was "the establishment of a Vernacular Crafts Council to compliment the fine arts and contemporary crafts remit of the Craft Council, and to serve as an umbrella organisation for all crafts operating in the heritage sector."

The report was widely welcomed and publicised in the press but the key recommendations were not taken up by government. It was the lack of action on this point that led to the setting up of the Heritage Crafts Association.

Monty Don champions traditional crafts in peril

The Heritage Crafts Association welcomes the new BBC2 Mastercrafts series which highlights traditional British crafts – but warns of a crisis in the continuation of these skills.

Tonight (12 February 2010) sees the broadcast of the first episode of Mastercrafts presented by Monty Don. Each week three TV ‘apprentices’ are put through their paces by the country's leading practitioners of traditional trades like woodcraft, metal work, thatching and stone masonry.

Robin Wood, the last professional pole-lathe bowl turner in the country and Chair of the Heritage Crafts Association, said:

“There is a growing interest in traditional crafts, and Mastercrafts shows the dedication that is needed to master these wonderful techniques. Unfortunately the Mastercrafts ‘apprenticeships’ are not matched by formal training opportunities in reality.

“Many of the skills that form part of our living heritage are endangered because there is no way for makers to pass their knowledge on.”

Despite the resurgence of public interest in the crafts featured in the series, many of our nation’s heritage crafts, from boat building to scissor making, now find themselves teetering on the brink of extinction due to lack of training schemes.

Some crafts have declined so much that only one craftsman remains – once this knowledge is gone, it will be lost forever.

Even the high-profile crafts featured in the series, such as blacksmithing and green woodwork, face a crisis in how they pass on skills, with training institutions like CoSIRA and Hook Park College (where two of the Mastercrafts experts learned their trades) no longer operating, and government apprenticeship schemes unworkable for the small niche businesses that characterise this highly productive sector of Britain’s workforce.

Mastercrafts airs at 9pm on Friday 12 February on BBC2.

Craftspeople - register now to attend the HCA forum

Please note - due to unprecedented levels of demand this event is now full!

The Heritage Crafts Association is holding a forum event for craftspeople, on the morning of Tuesday 23 March 2010, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The HCA’s aim is to support and promote heritage crafts as a fundamental part of our living heritage. Since its website went live earlier this year, it has attracted hundreds of supporters all keen to help ensure a sustainable future for traditional heritage crafts.

In order to consolidate this support the HCA wishes to bring together representatives of as many traditional craft forms as possible, to help prioritise its aims and ensure that its actions remain in line with the interests and needs of the UK’s traditional craftspeople.

The forum will start at 10.15am (for 10.30am), with introduction by HCA Chairman Robin Wood, followed by a keynote address by Professor Ewan Clayton. There will then be a facilitated discussion and summation, before the event draws to a close at 12.45pm.

The forum is absolutely free to attend. However, the HCA is a non-profit organisation without core funding, and refreshments and hire of venue are both costs it has to meet, so any contributions, however small, would be very gratefully received, to help towards the costs of refreshments and venue hire. To make a donation, please visit our donations page at www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/donate.html where you can donate by credit card or PayPal. Please make a note that you are a Heritage Crafts Forum attendee and you will be formally acknowledged in the event literature.

If you would like to attend, please email Daniel Carpenter at info@heritagecrafts.org.uk. Please note that places are limited and it is anticipated that the event will become fully booked very quickly. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis, with all subsequent expressions of interest being placed on a reserves list.

Further information and joining instruction will be sent prior to the event.

NB: In anticipation of the Heritage Crafts Forum, a short questionnaire has been put online to identify some of the pertinent issues – if you haven’t already done so, you can fill this in online at www.surveymonkey.com/s/6FNQF6L. The survey closes on 28 February 2010.

The Traditional Crafts Blog

The Heritage Crafts Association has set up a new blog, written by Robin Wood, HCA Chair. The blog has been pre-loaded with over 70 previous items written by Robin and will be updated regularly with the latest opinions and observations about the traditional crafts sector and the work of the HCA.

To view the blog, go to http://traditionalcraftsblog.blogspot.com or if you use an RSS reader you can access the feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/traditionalcraftsblog.

The HCA is now also on microblogging site Twitter. To follow its tweets, go to http://twitter.com/heritage_crafts.

Heritage Crafts Association achieves charitable status

Less than a year after being formed, the Heritage Crafts Association is now a UK charity.

Charitable status will help underpin the HCA's work in supporting and promoting traditional heritage crafts for the benefit of everyone.

The Heritage Crafts Association is registered with the Charity Commission of England and Wales - charity number 1133646.