Discover trad crafts

Have fun, learn a new skill and help secure the future of a traditional craft? Sign us up. Here our team joins some of the UK's most rewarding craft courses

- Matt Baird

1 Crafts at risk

With King Charles III as a patron, Heritage Crafts (heritagecrafts. org.uk) is a national charity set up to “celebrate, support and safeguard traditional craft skills”. Its latest Red List of Endangered Crafts report makes for sober reading, however, with five skills classed as 'extinct' (including gold beating), 71 as 'critically endangered' (such as arrowsmithing and piano making) and 94 as 'endangered' (including bicycle frame-making).

2 Raw metal

Keen to discover some of the UK's traditional crafts, I'm at Oldfield Forge in the beautiful Golden Valley area of Herefordshire, which was built by Aaron and Nicky Heath in 2007. “Aaron has a real passion for blacksmithing and wanted to share this traditional craft with so many other people,” says Nicky, Oldfield Forge's director. “Herefordshire has always been linked with blacksmithing, but Oldfield grew from our family farm and has since become a meaningful part of keeping the craft going in the UK. There's something special about taking a raw piece of metal and turning it into something beautiful or useful.”

3 Craft creations

What to forge is the most pressing question at the start of our three-hour 'Just for Fun' session. I go practical and attempt a bottle opener, while my partner Karry opts for a candlestick. Our