Craft status
The Heritage Crafts Red List
Drawing on the conservation status system used by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust Watchlist, Heritage Crafts uses a system of four categories of risk to assess the viability of heritage crafts. A heritage craft is considered to be viable if there are sufficient craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation.
Extinct in the UK
Crafts classified as ‘extirpated’ or ‘locally extinct’ are those which are no longer practised in the UK. For the purposes of this research, this category only includes crafts which have become extinct in the past generation.
Critically Endangered
Crafts classified as ‘critically endangered’ are those at serious risk of no longer being practised in the UK. They may include crafts with a shrinking base of craftspeople, crafts with limited training opportunities, crafts with low financial viability, or crafts where there is no mechanism to pass on the skills and knowledge.
Endangered
Crafts classified as ‘endangered’ are those which currently have sufficient craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation, but for which there are serious concerns about their ongoing viability. This may include crafts with a shrinking market share, an ageing demographic or crafts with a declining number of practitioners.
Currently Viable Crafts
Crafts classified as ‘currently viable’ are those which are in a healthy state and have sufficient craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation. They may include crafts with a large market share, widely popular crafts, or crafts with a strong local presence. A classification of ‘currently viable’ does not mean that the craft is risk-free or without issues affecting its future sustainability/viability.
Heritage Crafts Inventory
The 2025 edition of the Red List of Endangered Crafts marks a significant evolution in how we understand and safeguard traditional crafts.
This year, we introduce the Heritage Craft Inventory – a new, inclusive framework that ensures all heritage crafts, regardless of their current status, have a place where they are recognised and valued under one umbrella. This expanded approach allows us to shine a light not only on endangered and critically endangered crafts, but also on those that are resurgent, culturally distinctive, or rooted in specific communities and regions. It reflects the dynamic landscape of craft today – one that is constantly evolving and shaped by both challenges and opportunities.
Culturally distinctive crafts
Crafts designated as ‘culturally distinctive’ might have a broad uptake across the UK, but hold a particular significance for a defined community of practice, whether that is geographic, cultural, ethnic or religious. Those that are also on the Red List are known as ‘crafts in need of cultural safeguarding’.
- Canal art and boat painting (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Cornish hedging (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Fair Isle Knitting
- Fair Isle straw back chair making (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Fairground art (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Gansey knitting
- Harris tweed weaving
- Islamic calligraphy
- Northern Isles basket making (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Orkney chair making (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Petrakivka (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Pysanky (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Sgian dubh and dirk making (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Shetland lace knitting
- Shinty caman making
- Sofrut calligraphy
- Sporran making (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Thatching (Irish vernacular) (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Thatching (Scottish vernacular) (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Thatching (Welsh vernacular) (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Vardo and living wagon crafts (craft for cultural safeguarding)
- Welsh double cloth weaving (craft for cultural safeguarding)
Resurgent crafts
Crafts designated as ‘resurgent’ are currently experiencing a positive trajectory as a result of an upswing in new entrants. Just because a craft is considered resurgent does not mean that it cannot also be endangered, but rather that its decline has started to reverse and that its situation is likely to continue improving.
Latest Red List stories
Craft skills remain under threat with 20 new additions to the Red List of Endangered Crafts
Nine more grants to help save endangered crafts
Craft skills under threat with 17 additions to the Red List of Endangered Crafts
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Heads Up – a hat making symposium for endangered crafts
The @britishhatguild and Heritage Crafts present a two-day symposium to celebrate Britain’s specialist millinery and hat making techniques that now feature on the Red List of Endangered Crafts. Hosted in the heritage-inspired surroundings of The Founders’ Livery Hall, and in partnership with the Worshipful Company of @feltmakers, the event will bring together makers, historians, designers and enthusiasts to honour skills deeply rooted in the nation’s cultural and fashion history.
Across a programme of talks on 16 and 17 May, the symposium will explore the craftsmanship, techniques and stories that define traditional hat-making. By shining a light on these remarkable skills and the people who practice them, the symposium offers an opportunity to appreciate their enduring relevance and to respect the rich legacy they represent within today’s British craft and design industry.
https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/events/heads-up/
#matchMAKER opportunity!
Apprentice Upholsterer
Location: Littleborough, Greater Manchester
Deadline: 11 May 2026
Family company New England Sofa Design in Littleborough are recruiting for an Apprentice Upholsterer. The successful candidate will complete a Level 2 Furniture Manufacturer Apprenticeship over the duration of 24 months.
What you’ll do at work:
• Upholstery and reupholstery of new and old furniture
• Using tools safely
• Use various fabrics and learn about their properties
• Health and safety, environmental and sustainability knowledge
• Reading of customer specs and measure, cut and fix material
Find out more including how to apply at https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/matchmaker.
#matchMAKER is the online platform for work-based training and entry-level employment opportunities hosted by @heritagecrafts and supported by @soanebritain.
Staying Alive
This exhibition, co curated by @makesouthwest and Heritage Crafts and taking place at MakeSW, Bovey Tracey, Devon from 2 May to 4 July, shines a light on some of the Southwest’s most endangered crafts.
Fourteen master makers share their skills, tools, and stories, showing how traditions shaped by the region’s land and sea still have relevance and beauty today. From boatbuilding and ropemaking to hedging, basketmaking, and tanning, these crafts connect past and present, keeping centuries of knowledge alive in the modern world.
Exhibitors:
• @aaronvalentinestephens, reverse glass sign making
• Alex Mears, boatbuilding
• @amy.goodwin.signwriter, fairground art
• Andrew Cockshaw @crestcornwall, Cornish hedging
• Greg Rowland MBE @wheelwrightgreg, wheelwright
• Jessie Watson Brown @rekindled.hearth, oak bark tanning
• @johnwilliamson.dartmoor, Devon stave basket making
• Nicholas Jarvis @lacebynicholas and Pauline Cochrane, bobbin lacemaking
• Robert Ely @papilionaceouspuresilk, ribbon making
• Sarah Liscoe, sailmaking
• Sue Morgan @crabpotcellars, withy pot making
• Vicky Putler @flax_project, flax processing
Events:
• 8 May, 10.30am to 4.30pm – Signwrite Your Own Ornate Letter, a workshop with Amy Goodwin
• 3 July, 10.30am to 3.30pm – Withy Pot Demo & Meet the Maker with Sue Morgan
• 4 July, 10.30am to 4pm – Make a Willow Crab Pot, a workshop with Sue Morgan
https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/events/stayingalive/
This week our Head of Craft Sustainability Mary Lewis @maryeluned_craft and Heritage Crafts ambassador Rose Sinclair MBE @dorcasstories joined other community groups, activists, sportspeople and celebrities at @10downingstreet to celebrate St George’s Day.
The aim of the event was to celebrate diversity, tolerance and community cohesion in England.
Heritage Crafts is the national charity for traditional heritage crafts and we work in partnership with Government and key agencies, to provide a focus for craftspeople, groups, societies and guilds, as well as individuals who care about the loss of traditional crafts skills. We aim to work towards a healthy and sustainable framework for the future.
#heritagecrafts #stGeorgesDay #heritageUK
Straw, transformed into gold ✨🌾
For Earth Day, we’re celebrating the beauty of making with natural materials.
Hanny Newton @hannynewton describes straw as “natural gold”, using skill and are to create extraordinary embroidery while reviving endangered heritage skills.
A reminder that some of the most innovative ideas for a sustainable future can be found in traditional crafts.
Filmed at the @socantiquaries during Modern Makers & Antiquities event last October that showcased intangible heritage displays and talks celebrating the relationship between crafts, conservation, and research. Various makers demonstrated practices handed down over hundreds of years, from bead-making to illumination, basket-weaving to fan performance.
#EarthDay #NaturalMaterials #HeritageCrafts #EmbroideryArt
#matchMAKER opportunity!
Weaver
Location: Elgin, Scotland
Deadline: 29 April 2026
Founded in 1797, Johnstons of Elgin is a luxury clothing brand celebrating 225 years of experience working with the world’s finest fibres. Across three centuries, the family-owned company has carefully sourced cashmere and fine woollen fibres from around the world, applying the latest technology and highest quality craft expertise in their very own vertical Scottish mills.
They are currently recruiting a Weaver to join their busy and growing weaving department. As a Weaver, you will be operating a set of looms efficiently, as well as repairing any broken warp and weft threads. You will be responsible for monitoring the looms for any weaving defects, evenness of colour or patterns and reporting any defects to our technicians. You will also ensure that weft creels are replenished with yarn, maintain product quality standards and work with attention to detail, you will nonetheless aim to achieve the required output levels to meet their production plan. There are some manual handing tasks and heavy lifting will be required.
Find out more including how to apply at https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/matchmaker.
#matchMAKER is the online platform for work-based training and entry-level employment opportunities hosted by @heritagecrafts and supported by @soanebritain.
In today’s Times, ‘London’s historic sites face ruin as specialist skills dwindle’.
“We are seeing critical gaps in heritage and craft skills and this is naturally imperilling London’s historic buildings,” says Neal Shasore, a Trustee at the Architectural Heritage Fund … “Over 2026 there is an anticipated £6 billion worth of construction works on pre-1919 buildings in London… Meanwhile, 16 per cent of heritage organisations surveyed within London reported workforce skills gaps, with an additional 31 per cent reporting skills shortages.”
https://www.thetimes.com/article/527416e1-beab-4ab2-b246-493de0c5860d (subscription required)
Photo: Grace Impesi, stonemason, by James Glossop
This week’s #MondayMaker is Nigel Armitage @armitageleather , a leatherworker using box, tub and saddle stitching in the traditional and modern styles. He is also a designer and educator.
Nigel has 30 years’ of experience in the industry, and has built a strong reputation as a maker of quality bespoke goods. He maintains the ethos that quality matters.
His items are completely handmade, using traditional and timeless techniques. He runs courses for absolute beginners to adept and advanced leatherworkers, including many other teachers – in the UK and abroad.
Nigel believes that sharing his knowledge is crucial to ensuring that the old skills are not lost and the craft is kept alive.
He has published two leather working books, ‘Leathercraft’ and ‘Belts’, and is currently planning a third. He has also produced a large number of instructional online videos to help budding leatherworkers, which can be found on his website and on YouTube.
Read more about his work on the Makers Directory at https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/maker/nigelarmitage/
#craft #leathercraft #heritagecrafts
