London town

Last week I spent 3 days in London for meetings.

That's a London plane leaf by the way, London is full of truly astonishing trees that few folk ever notice. And from an old London landmark to a new one, this is the shard, the first very tall modern building on the South bank, it is going to be pretty impressive when finished. I love the south bank, lots of cultural stuff there from the Globe Theatre to Tate Modern, the Golden Hinde to Southwark Cathedral. On my way to a meeting I came across this lovely sculpture. At a glance it looks like just one more chainsaw sculpture (I am not a fan) but on closer inspection it was clearly hewn with axe and adze.

It's the work of Stephan Balkenhol I liked it a lot.

Anyway our meeting was at the old leather market, now home of Creative and Cultural Skills. It was the inception meeting for a £90,000 research project to assess the current state of traditional crafts in England.

We have lots of anecdotal evidence about issues in the sector, particularly difficulties of passing skills from one generation to the next. This research will find out the extent of the problem as well as assessing the commercial value of the sector and the opportunities for growth. This is exactly what we need in order to convince folk that they should be investing in the traditional crafts and ensuring skills are passed on. The meeting went well and probably in January there will be opportunity for individual craftspeople to input into the research project. The day after we had our first meeting of the Heritage Crafts Association skills working group. These are a team of folk from across a broad spectrum of the crafts and including folk familiar with the educational system. The object is to take forward the recommendations of the 110 delegates at the skills forum
It may sound a bit dull but we are all committed to our crafts, to seeing craft back in education, decent apprenticeships in craft and adequate support for mastercraftspeople whilst they take time away from making in order to pass their skills on. I am determined that when we look back in 10 years time that we will have made a difference.