It’s a long way from my normal habitat of an old workshop filled with woodshavings but here I am at Buckingham Palace for tea and cakes at a garden party, the Queen was wearing pink too.
For anyone that is interested “tea” involves cucumber sandwiches with fresh mint leaves on mothers pride style white bread with the crust cut off and lots of very nice little cakes. The Palace gardens run right up to the high wall at the edge of Hyde Park Corner and are a delightful mix of formal and natural, I enjoyed watching the coots nesting on the pond with no idea how special their surroundings were.
The other purpose of the London trip was to visit the Department of Culture Media and Sport, there has been a lot of anxiety in the UK craft world over the last few weeks after DCMS issued a consultation paper about how they measure the creative industries. At a glance they appeared to be dropping crafts as a category, the truth is much more complex but we needed to meet and get to the bottom of the situation. For anyone that wants the full detail on the current situation you can see it on the HCA blog here I am much happier now though we still have a lot of work to do.
In all my London meetings I am helped by HCA Vice Chair Patricia Lovett, she is just the best person for the job and can make friends with anybody. I have learned so much from her. We felt our jolly to the palace was a justifiable treat after all the hard voluntary work for traditional crafts over the last 4 years.
I hope you enjoyed it. An acknowledgment of the hard work you put in for the craft community.