House of Commons
The Crafts Council hosted an event at the House of Commons to launch a season of anniversary events and initiatives.
Rosy Greenlees, John Hayes MP, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling and Joanna Foster CBE
Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, John Hayes
Grayson Perry, Rosy Greenlees and John Hayes MP
Maureen Bampton, Deirdre Figueiredo, Crafts Council Patron Tuan Lee, Rita McLean and Steve Dixon
Belinda Fisher, Peter Ting and Geoffrey Mann
Bonnie Kemske, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling and Tord Boontje
Rosy Greenlees speaking to guests
An illustrious set of guests joined us at the House of Commons on the 19 May to help launch a season of 40th anniversary celebrations. MP’s, makers, partners, Crafts Council patrons, and Craft Champions all attended an afternoon tea to celebrate the role the Crafts Council has played in supporting contemporary craft over the last 40 years.
Our Chair of Trustees, Joanna Foster CBE, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, John Hayes, and our Executive Director Rosy Greenlees all spoke at the event.
Joanna Foster spoke about the range of work that the Crafts Council does – focusing on our organisational goal to make the UK the best place to make, see, collect and learn about craft. We do this by building an evidence base that demonstrates the value of craft, building the market through events like COLLECT and Origin, through high-quality ambitious exhibitions across the country, by providing opportunity to learn about craft in school and communities and by supporting makers’ professional development to help them to produce their best work.
Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, who has been a supporter of the Crafts Council for 38 years of its life and who is now a Craft Champion, spoke about the organisation’s history and how the positioning of craft has changed over that time. Whilst debate still surrounds where craft ‘sits’ he urged that we see this as offering a range of possibilities. The crafts are a spectrum, and the more inclusive, varied and versatile the better. Download Professor Sir Christopher Frayling’s speech in full here
Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, John Hayes, gave a speech that clearly demonstrated a personal belief that making and the learning of craft skills are crucial on both an individual and national level. Hayes asserted that practical endeavour is often superior to academic study and that acquiring skills makes our lives fuller.
Our Executive Director Rosy Greenlees spoke about the new Ruby Circle donation scheme through which we hope to make the Crafts Council’s Collection an outstanding and accessible national resource and placed even more firmly at the heart of all our work. We plan to acquire more examples of work by leading makers, develop new approaches to touring and loans, build our online resources and establish digital links with regional collections making the Collection a national hub for information and research.
Finally Professor Christopher Frayling relayed a story that seems a fitting note on which to end. Professor Frayling attended a lecture by esteemed furniture maker Edward Barnsley shortly before his death in 1987. Barnsley had been ill and suffered a relapse during the lecture and his mind went blank. All he could do was to repeat, several times over, some verses of the D.H. Lawrence poem Things Men Have Made;
Things men have made with wakened hands / and put soft life into /
are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing for long years.
And for this reason, some old things are lovely
warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.
