Heritage Crafts Association

Across the UK, centuries-old crafts such as watchmaking, parchment and paper making, bell founding and piano making are at risk of dying out. It is already impossible to buy a new cricket ball hand-stitched in the country which gave birth to the game. Labour-intensive, highly skilled crafts risk becoming financially unsustainable in a world of mass-produced, throwaway goods, and training routes to encourage young workers into these crafts are increasingly scarce. Traditional crafts are not covered by either arts or heritage programmes, so they fall through the gaps in public funding.

The Heritage Crafts Association brings together craftspeople, guilds and people who are fascinated by these crafts, advocating for their support and celebrating their heritage. They compile an annual Red List of Endangered Crafts to highlight those crafts most at risk of vanishing, and those that are no longer practised in the UK. They work to improve training routes, enabling these skills to be passed on to the next generation and connecting self-employed craftspeople and microbusinesses so they can offer each other support and advice.

In July 2020, the Swire Charitable Trust awarded the Heritage Crafts Association an unrestricted grant of £90,000 over three years to support their invaluable work in championing this unsung part of the UK’s intangible cultural heritage.