Have You Got a Calling to Heritage Craft?
Have you ever felt a deep pull toward the traditional arts - weaving, natural dyeing, basketry, or other heritage techniques? Perhaps you’d love to join us for an artist residency: to immerse yourself in material, process, place, and tradition. Yet the reality is that many of these opportunities require financial investment - travel, tools, tuition, materials etc which can be a barrier, especially in a sector where patronage is rare and markets are niche.
We want you to know: you are not alone. There are organisations, trusts, and funding bodies whose mission is to support people exactly like you: makers, heritage-craft learners, and deeply committed practitioners. Below is a guide to bursaries, grants, and funding you might apply to and some reflection on why preserving heritage craft is so vital, for Scotland and the wider world.
Why Heritage Craft Matters and Why Funding It Is an Environmental & Cultural Win
Cultural Resilience
Heritage crafts are living threads in our cultural tapestry. Every skill passed from maker to apprentice keeps alive not just objects, but stories, techniques, material wisdom, and relationships to place. In Scotland, our material heritage forms a bridge to our past, grounding contemporary practice in continuity.
If these skills are lost, they are very hard to re-invent. That makes the work you do as a craftsperson vital, not just for yourself and your community, but for future generations.
Environmental & Sustainable Benefits
Many traditional crafts often embody sustainable logics: locally sourced or renewable materials, low-energy techniques, repair, reuse, and minimal waste. In an age of mass production and consumption, knowing how to repair, conserve, or re-make is itself a form of ecological activism. Investing in heritage craft is also (seemingly ironically) investing in more sustainable futures.
Moreover, learning and transmitting hand skills has climate value: the slower, low-carbon, human scale of craft offers a counterbalance to industrial, fossil-fuel-based production. By supporting heritage craft, funders help propagate low-impact practices. These are often ‘heirloom pieces’ that will be treasured and not end up in landfill.
Cultural & Economic Multipliers
Supporting craft learners helps diversify who can enter the field (enriching equity) and contributes to place-based economies in rural, island, and remote communities where craft can become part of a regenerative local economy. In short: supporting you individually, supports more than you think.
Bursaries & Funding Opportunities for Heritage Craft Learners
Below is a selection of current (Oct 2025) relevant schemes. Always double-check eligibility, deadlines, and application guidelines on the respective websites.
Heritage Crafts - Training Bursaries & Endangered Crafts Fund
https://www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/
Training Bursaries
Heritage Crafts (UK) offers up to £4,000 to help new entrants and early-career craftspeople overcome financial barriers, especially those in hardship. These bursaries can cover tuition, specialist tools/materials, or travel/accommodation (limited to ~30% of budget).
They also have ring-fenced funding for Black and ethnically diverse trainees, military veterans, or those working in certain UK regions.
Endangered Crafts Fund
This fund supports projects that help safeguard crafts listed on the Red List of Endangered Crafts. It may back training, apprenticeships, equipment to support transmission, or innovation in traditional craft.
Craft Scotland - Inches Carr Craft Bursaries
https://www.craftscotland.org/
Craft Scotland administers the Inches Carr Craft Bursaries, with separate tracks for Established Makers (5+ years of practice) and Emerging Makers (1–5 years).
The Established Maker bursary is £5,000 (two awarded in 2025) and is intended to help makers develop or deepen their practice, such as by learning new techniques or undertaking a residency.
The Emerging Maker bursaries are smaller (e.g. £2,000) and support those still in early stages of their craft careers.
These funds are explicitly aimed at makers in Scotland, working in contemporary craft disciplines, and can support residencies, courses, new material experiments, or research & development.
Also through Craft Scotland’s funding and awards pages you can find scholarship opportunities (e.g. via QEST) and craft-sector support.
Creative Scotland - Open Fund / VACMA & Partner Funds
https://www.creativescotland.com/
Open Fund for Individuals
This is one of Creative Scotland’s flagship funding routes. You can apply for between £500 and £50,000 to support research, development, and project delivery over up to 24 months.
Eligibility: freelance or self-employed artists/creative practitioners based in Scotland (18+) with a UK bank account.
Visual Artist & Craft Maker Awards (VACMA)
Through Creative Scotland and partner arts agencies, VACMA offers fixed bursaries - typically £500 or £1,000 to visual artists and craft makers for professional development and creative growth.
Other Programmes / Targeted Funding
Creative Scotland runs a variety of targeted funds e.g. Crowdmatch (match funding via crowdfunding) and funds distributed via partners. You should browse their funding programmes page for the full list.
Additionally, Creative Scotland delivers partnership funds that support local craft and visual arts opportunities via Local Authority partners.
Scottish Artists Union
While the Scottish Artists Union (SAU) is primarily a professional membership and advocacy organisation rather than a direct funder, they may circulate grants, relief funds, opportunities, or emergency support to members. Their website is: https://artistsunion.scot/
If you are (or become) a member, it’s worth keeping an eye on their announcements, sometimes support for arts, craft, or hardship funds is shared through their network.
Additional / Broader Funds to Investigate
Churchill Fellowship / Grand Plan - They run cultural awards and small grants for creative projects, including heritage and arts initiatives.
National Lottery Heritage Fund - For projects that engage heritage, communities, interpretation, learning. (Note: larger scale, often via organisations)
Paul Hamlyn Foundation - They sometimes support arts, learning and cultural innovation, which might align with heritage craft training
Maker Relief Fund - A UK fund offering emergency relief grants (~£1,000) to craftspeople facing financial hardship.
Tips for Applying & Making Your Case
Be very clear about your learning plan: Which techniques, under which tutor or institution? How will this deepen your work or contribute to craft transmission?
Budget thoughtfully: Include tools, materials, travel, accommodation - but be realistic. Some funders cap travel or overheads (e.g. Heritage Crafts bursaries cap non-tuition costs).
Show evidence of commitment: Your portfolio, documentation of work, any previous training or experiments.
Link to your values: Emphasise how your project contributes to heritage, sustainability, community, or craft transmission.
Check match or co-funding requirements: Some grants require you to raise part of the funding yourself.
Support & mentoring: Ask whether the funder offers guidance, mentoring, or partnership support along with the grant.
Deadlines & timing: Note that many of these funds open only once a year. Set reminders.
Budget for application time: A well-crafted application can make all the difference.
How we all make it work
We are often approached by wonderful and creative people wanting to expand their knowledge and skills or start their craft journey via the residential training we offer, who are financially restricted in accessing us.
Many of these people offer to volunteer with us in exchange for training and we (sadly) mostly have to refuse. Whilst we value our volunteers immensely (we have a regular group every Thursday & there is often a craft element to the day) it is just not financially viable for us as an organisation, to pay our wonderful tutors & makers well & remain a sustainable community interest company without learners and crafters financial investment in tuition.
Which is why we wrote this blog - as our very first! We want you here, and we want to share what we do with you and we have to also ‘make the numbers work’; keep the lights on, the fire going and support our community by being here to grow, teach and make for many years to come.
If you feel called to heritage craft but have been hesitating because of financial barriers, please know: you deserve to pursue this path. Many makers have taken exactly this route: applying for funding, embarking on residencies, immersing in technique, and returning with renewed vision.
We would love to host you, learn with you, and see how your unique voice and craft can blossom. We hope the above gives you some starting points in realising your dreams.
Let’s keep heritage craft alive, not as museum relics, but as living, evolving practices full of possibility.
It is also worth noting that we offer ‘Makers Agreements’ - for Self Employed, experienced makers who want to join us in our space to make and sell their heritage crafts from. These are separate agreements to our residential offerings and do not include a tuition component.
You can find out more about becoming a maker by contacting us on office@naturallyuseful.co.uk