Resilient Heritage Project
​Resilient Heritage Project, The Heritage Lottery Fund

Early in 2018 we were fortunate enough to be awarded funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund through their Resilient Heritage Programme.

Project Aims
The project aims to deliver significant changes and improvements to the way the Craft in the Bay operates. As such we have defined a series of clear Outcomes that we will use to measure the success of the schemes. The outcomes will be used to structure the evaluation of the scheme, the findings of which will be shared fully with HLF, partners and the wider community. Our objectives are aligned with those of the Heritage Lottery Fund, namely:
  • Heritage will be better managed, both our craft heritage and our building heritage.
  • People will have developed skills,
  • More people and a wider range of people will have engaged
  • The local economy will be boosted
  • Our organisation will be more resilient and more able to meet future challenges.


Our detailed outcomes are:
  • Business Review - Improve the business model through strengthening the structures and processes.  Challenging our aims and objectives is seen as vital to ensuring the Guild's future success as the National Centre for Craft; this will allow us to ensure effective management and the day-to-day running of the heritage building. It will also improve the financial resilience and sustainability of the charity by increasing footfall and spend/donations from visitors, and identifying efficiencies, and further opportunities.
  • Condition Report and Maintenance schedule- Our building has been open for nearly 20 years; we have not undertaken a review of its needs and requirements. The Guild has identified areas that require attention. But we need to strengthen the ability of the organisation to understand the longterm costs of maintaining our Heritage building. We also need to understand the potential to further develop the historic aspects of the building in future. Furthermore we need to be able to budget for this work over say, a 10 year period.
  • Architectural Review – We have grown to use the building and its spaces and over the years, we have identified areas where we can improve the use of spaces, and better utilise the space that we have. Our workshops are hidden away out of sight, we feel that our audiences would benefit from seeing craft being created, and some of our members may also benefit from the provision of additional open studio space, so providing accessible workshop spaces for use by artists in residence, members or the public would be a benefit.


In November 2018  we were able to undertake a LiDAR scan of our Heritage Building.


For more about Heritage Lottery Funding please visit their website
Heritage Lottery Fund Resilient Heritage Project
Above is a 3D fly through of our building

Below are some LiDAR scans of Craft in the Bay by Terradat 

Volunteer Oral Histories

A unique Educational Resource
As a volunteer led organisation we recognise the importance of our volunteers. We currently have around 125 voluteers who gave 497 days to the Guild. We want to create an visual history of our organisation through the recording of our history from our voluteers. Back in 2016 we took part in another Heritage Lottery Fund project led by VCS Cymru.  The Chronicle Project was a community heritage project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and run by VCS Cymru with the aims to document the history of volunteering in Cardiff, from 1914 to 2014. We want to build on these oral histories to create a digital archive, which can be used as a unique educational resource.
Here is an oral history interview with Molly Curley, a founding member of The Makers Guild in Wales, that took place on 18 September 2016.

Here is an oral history interview with Gill David, one of our longest serving volunteers, that took place on the 18th September 2016