Yesterday we had a most promising meeting with UK Director of Culture Mick Elliot. He has been involved in initiatives in Stoke to recognise the importance of the pottery industry and as someone who lived for some time in Sheffield he was well aware of the importance of traditional cutlery making to the city. He liked the pocket knife and…
Monty Don’s Mastercrafts series is highlighting the skills involved in traditional crafts and bringing much needed attention. The Heritage Crafts Association have been campaigning to promote and protect these crafts so we are delighted with the publicity. I blogged just before the start of the series when I was looking through the proofs of the book, at that stage I…
I am currently getting ready for a meeting with Mick Elliot, Director of Culture at DCMS, on Monday. Remember Sir Humphrey from yes minister? We don’t expect Mick Elliot will be anything like the famous fictional civil servant but if we are to get traditional crafts recognised and supported as part of our cultural heritage Mick Elliot could help oil…
One of the key jobs of the Heritage Crafts Association is what we call advocacy. It is largely about meeting as many influential people as possible and letting them know about what is going on the world of traditional crafts and what they may be able to do to help. Yesterday was a good example of our Advocacy work, HCA…
January 2009 saw a bunch of press articles about “the last master cooper”I put links to some on them in my blog post here. There was clearly something about a craft which everyone had heard about being potentially endangered that struck a raw nerve and warranted a lot of news coverage, all good news for traditional crafts and shows the…
Friday I went to London again and had a day of meetings, first with Kathryn Hollingsworth director of Aawaz communications PR company and a basketmaker. Kathryn and her friend Andrea are happy to help the Heritage Crafts Association with our PR work and bring a wealth of experience. Next stop was DCMS to meet with Annabel Houghton the adviser on…
“Where can I get information about apprenticeships in traditional crafts?” is a question I am often asked. The other question when I publicise the work of old traditional craftspeople who are the last doing a particular skill is why don’t they have an apprentice. People ask me the same thing. I would like to discus the very real difficulties involved…
My first blog post of 2009 talked about the need for a traditional craft organisation here. Just a year on I feel so much more positive about the future of traditional craft skills. We still have a way to go but the foundations have been laid for 2010 to be the year when traditional crafts become recognised as an important…
I know many of my blog readers are signed up supporters of the Heritage Crafts Association and will have received this message by email but for those that have not…. The Heritage Crafts Association’s aim is to support and promote heritage crafts as a fundamental part of our living heritage. Since the HCA website went live earlier this year, we…
Jon Henley’s article on Mike Turnock the last sievemaker is in the guardian today and online here. As always it is a really nicely written article and there will be a slide show showing all the processes of making a sieve on Tuesday next week, I’ll add a link when it is up. The photo of Mike is not very…
