London 3 times in a week, all in the name of traditional craft.

Today was a quick trip to London for a meeting with a range of organisations in the world of heritage and craft. We are trying to work together to see if there are key issues that affect us all. If there are then joint campaigns are more likely to be successful than working alone. We met at HLF offices and since HLF are undertaking their policy review at the moment if we can feed into that we may help them target their funds to where it is most effective 12 months down the line.

Wednesday is a busy day of meetings in London most importantly with John Hayes skills minister to discuss craft skills training issues. Then we meet the Marsh Trust to discuss a potential Marsh Award for heritage crafts, third meeting is at the V&A to run through final plans for the HCA conference on Saturday and then we meet with arts and business who run the excellent Crafted scheme to see if there are ways we can work together.


It is a great relief that HCA now has enough funds to cover my travel expenses for these trips but the time is and always will be voluntary so I need to squeeze some workshop time in too to pay the bills.


Tomorrow I am putting finishing touches to powerpoint presentations for the V&A on Saturday. We have some huge news to open the conference with which we have known for a couple of weeks and can't wait to share, it involves a very high profile new supporter of the Heritage Crafts Association. We also have just received back finished data from a major survey of all the councils of England, 354 of them, finding out what they do to support crafts in their area (or not).