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.
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The Endangered Crafts exhibition at Stourbridge Glass Museum @glassmuseumuk opened today!
A partnership between @glassmuseumuk @contemporaryglasssociety and @heritagecrafts, the exhibition features fabulous objects made using crafts featured on the Heritage Crafts Red List including scientific glassblowing, brilliant cutting and neon sign making!
A lot of the curation and organising was done by glass artist and trainee scientific glassblower Elena Fleury-Rojo @redflowerglass, who is a Heritage Crafts training bursary and Endangered Crafts Fund recipient.
There were also some amazing demonstrations of mouth blown flat glass, glassblowing and neon tube bending… all in a UK heatwave! 🥵
The exhibition is open until 7 November 2026.
✨ Nominations are OPEN for the 2026 Heritage Crafts Awards! ✨
For the fourteenth year, Heritage Crafts is celebrating the incredible master craftspeople, emerging makers, and unsung heroes keeping the UK’s traditional living crafts alive. 🛠️🧵
These awards celebrate the extraordinary talent across the UK, from silversmiths and weavers, to stained glass makers and upholsterers and beyond – who work with their hands, heads and hearts to preserve our cultural legacy.
🏆 With 22 categories and prizes include:
• Patron’s Award for Endangered Crafts: £5,000 award (£1,000 for runner-up) for safeguarding at-risk skills as per the Red List of Endangered Crafts
• National Makers of the Year: Regional awards up to £2,000
• Emerging Makers: £1,000 prizes for early-career practitioners (new categories announced!)
• Backbone of the craft: Celebrating top Trainers, Trainees, Community Catalysts and Lifetime Achievers
📝 Key Info:
• All via a single online form.
• Finalists will be invited to a high-profile Winners’ Reception at Goldsmiths’ Hall, London, this November in partnership with @thegoldsmithscompany
⏳ Deadline: Friday 21 August, at 5pm
🔗 Nominate someone (or yourself!) today: Head to the Heritage Crafts website to apply via the linktr.ee in our bio, https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/opportunities/awards/ or the ‘Opportunities’ section of the Heritage Crafts website.
Help shine a spotlight on the makers who define our culture. Our enormous gratitude to our generous sponsors who make this possible.
The awards are presented in partnership with supporters the @kingcharlesfund, @royalmintuk, the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, @thegoldsmithscompany, @costume_society, @marshawards, @theleathersellers, the Broderers’ Company, @SPAB1877, @bsmgp, @woodsmith_uk, @sonnaz_, @roseuniacke, @hiutdenim and @mournetextiles
#HeritageCrafts #HeritageCraftsAwards #UKMakers #TraditionalCrafts #CraftAwards
Our Endangered Crafts Fund at @heritagecrafts is one way we support makers in keeping their skills alive.
As @patternmakers mentioned, it’s more than the financial support, it’s about being part of a community of makers and having access to support. When makers receive funding from us, they have access to our Recipients` Circle, fostering long-term support with regular Circle Social and Circle Surgery meetings.
Applicants who practice an endangered craft can apply for up to £2,500 develop their practice. Whether it’s for tools, machinery or for creative way to pass on the knowledge. For example, @patternmakers was able to apply for a large dyeing vat, which helped her to be able to print longer length of fabric, which keeps her practice viable. Look how beautiful her work is on display at this year’s @craftfestival in Bovey Tracey. 😍
When you become a member or donate, this is the sort of work you’re supporting!
DEADLINE for the next round of applications is 5pm, Friday 16 October 2026.
We have more details on our website under `Opportunities`.
If you’re thinking of applying these are the sorts of things to consider…
Does your idea help ensure the longer-term viability or survival of heritage craft skills, for example:
⭐️developing a new, innovative approach to heritage craft skills;
⭐️investing in more efficient machinery;
⭐️developing new routes to market;
⭐️exploring the use of sustainable alternative materials while maintaining the heritage character of your practice.
Direct and indirect skills transfer, for example:
⭐️taking on a trainee or apprentice;
⭐️preparing to teach courses, including the creation of training materials;
⭐️online or video content to support skills sharing and documentation;
⭐️specialist tools and equipment to facilitate training.
Continuous professional development, for example:
⭐️acquiring the knowledge and skills required to run a successful small business;
⭐️acquiring the advanced craft skills or allied craft skills necessary to make a craft practice more viable, e.g. through a training course or self-directed learning.
Do you know the real story behind the Red List of Endangered Crafts?
We’ve had a few new followers around here and thought it was about time that we tell you about one of our most high-profile projects.
The Red List is not supposed to just be about the shock factor of crafts at risk – it’s about giving makers a framework with which to communicate the value of what they do, and to give the public a space to debate what they collectively want to carry into the future.
There are many makers out there who are so busy trying to do what they do best, they don’t have the time to advocate for themselves, and so the Red List is a way for the whole sector to raise awareness of the wider structural issues that affect the viability of heritage crafts.
One glimmer of hope is that as more people reject AI and turn towards analogue, material and off-screen experiences, they will really appreciate the value of the handmade and the skill that goes with that.
Let’s protect the skill and those who hold them, and enable them to pass it on to the next generation!
#heritagecrafts #endangeredcraft #whatistheredlistofendangeredcrafts #craftUK
Wow! As a small charity we literally do a happy dance every time someone signs up to be a member, donates and chooses to be part of our community. Welcome to all our new followers! We are overwhelmed with gratitude. 20k followers in two days is incredible. 🤯
We have worked hard over the last 16 years to build an argument to protect craft skills as living heritage and none of this would be possible without you. It is truely the community of makers that inform what we do. There’s also the fans and the supporters who are local and across the world, that enable us to continue too. We couldn’t do it without you.
For context, we made a post pretending to do a Netflix documentary, and its success shows that many of you are interested in the work that we do around the Red list of Endangered Crafts. It’s research that we undertake every two years and research for the next edition is just about to start, due to be published nearly next year.
Stay in touch, be part of the community and once again we are so grateful you’ve chosen to follow us.
#redlistofendangeredcrafts #heritagecrafts #make #craft
Behind the scenes of the Netflix documentary trend, which that blew up. We are in awe! Thank you for following us and supporting heritage craft skills. We hope that with so many new faces around here will be able to do so much more to help Heritage Craft in the UK.
We had a person volunteering with us to help with social media and after three months, this was their last day. They suggested that we try out this new Netflix documentary trend while we were at the festival of making and next thing you know, the followers started rolling in. We hope this is a sign that everyone is starting to value craft, making and the handmade. We hope that people now know about the Red List of Endangered Crafts and that we are the authors of it. We also hope that people realise that we aren’t publicly funded which means every Membership or donation helps us to do what we need to do to support Heritage Crafters.
Thank you for your support! We have more details on our website if you would like to get involved.
Many thanks! The Heritage Crafts team 💖
#heritagecraft #redlistofendangeredcrafts #maker #craft #saxophone
Passing on the skills to keep the craft alive, with @heritagecrafts at the @thefestivalofmaking in Blackburn this weekend.
Thank you to all our workshop demonstrators for being so generous with your knowledge and to everyone that came to talk to us, learn about the Red List and took part in a workshop.
We love creating opportunities for makers to demonstrate their work and connect with others.
Thank you to @phillgregson for your wheel spoke making, @fishbone.sycamore for your weaving sessions, @welbyandwright for the encaustic tile making and to @ernestwrightltd for making us all obsessed with your scissors. We loved meeting @vicjay_art, thank you for teaching your corn dollie craft with us.
Anyone reading this should go give them a follow and support their work!
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#heritagecraft #endangeredcraft #redlistofendangeredcrafts #festivalofmaking blackburn
When 50k of you have decide to follow us, we must be doing something right.
When we formed 16 years ago, we could never have imagined to have uncovered so many amazing makers doing incredible things to keep their craft skills alive.
The first Red List was published in 2017 and every two years since then and it’s impacting the public debate more than we could ever have imagined.
We’re about to start work on the 2027 edition – due to be published next May. We rely on makers to help us shape it so do get in touch, share our work and follow for updates.
Thanks for being part of our community and helping to keep the skills alive.
#heritagecrafts #redlistofendangeredcrafts #craft #netflixdocumentary
