The Crafts Council are looking for partners for Make! Craft! Live!

To mark their 50-year anniversary, the Crafts Council are running a 12-month public programme called Make! Craft! Live!

The programme will run from October 2021 to October 2022 and will be principally delivered through 50 craft activities that will take place at partner venues across the UK including: craft studios, museums, galleries, cultural venues, schools, community centres and online.

Over the course of the 12-months, a varied programme of activities will unravel across the country. Some activities will be initiated by the Crafts Council, and some will be driven by the wider craft community whose activities they will promote and support. That’s where you come in!

The Crafts Council launched an open call for activities that celebrate craft as a powerful and transformative tool to shape needed social change.

They are particularly interested in projects that can demonstrate that they engage with one or more of the following areas:

• Spotlighting, supporting, or showcasing makers from Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ makers and makers who identify as having a visible or non-visible disability
• Championing ideas of equity and social justice
• Highlighting new cutting-edge practice that seeks to push or challenge the boundaries of craft
• Prioritising collaboration and collective ways of working
• Exploring crafts’ positive impact on mental health and wellbeing
• Demonstrating how craft can help protect and restore our environment and address issues of climate injustice

50 activities will be selected overall - this could be an exhibition, talk, learning event, fair, open studio or other – from the open call to form part of the core programme for Make! Craft! Live!. Those 50 activities will receive support and promotion from the Crafts Council and form part of a vibrant programme of cultural activities celebrating craft.

To see the programmes activities so far, have a read of the Make! Craft! Live! roundup, including exhibitions at Manchester’s Craft and Design Centre, collaborative needlework projects in Somerton and the Craft Council’s current exhibition We Gather.

Further information on the programme and how to apply can be found here.

Please note, activity due to take place between March and May 2022 should be submitted by February 28, and activities taking place between June and October should be submitted by 31 May.