Craft School
Craft School is a free nationwide challenge designed to get EYFS, primary and secondary school learners engaged in hands-on making.
Launching this September 2025, we invite educators and learners to explore the theme of community through craft and making in collaboration with our maker champion, Turner Prize-winning artist Jasleen Kaur.
The programme is free and supports education providers and learners from EYFS to KS4 with digital resources, online CPD sessions, and Educator Forums. Craft School can be integrated into your curriculum, used as a cross-curricular project, after-school club, or home-school programme, helping young people get making across all learning settings and stages.
Students at a Craft School exhibition. Photo: Steve Bainbridge Children making at a Hey Clay workshop. Photo: Iona Wolff
About Jasleen Kaur
Jasleen Kaur is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores community, cultural memory, inherited traditions, and ideas of belonging, often using everyday objects to challenge dominant narratives. Her Turner Prize-winning installation, Alter Altar, reflects on traditions and histories, examining how culture is inherited and reimagined. Having trained in jewellery and silversmithing, making is an important element of Jasleen’s practice. In 2011, works from her Tools for Living series were acquired into the Crafts Council's Handling Collection, where they can now be handled.
Jasleen Kaur in the Crafts Council collection store. Photo: Elijah Serumaga Jasleen Kaur making. Photo: Elijah Serumaga
Make First
Craft School: Jasleen’s Challenge is underpinned by our educational pedagogy, ‘Make First’, which puts materials into the hands of learners from the outset. This approach empowers learners to determine the direction of their work and develop their voices as craftspeople. Make First inspires a lifelong love of making, nurtures creative confidence, and offers insight into progression routes and careers in craft.
A child making at a Hey Clay workshop. Photo: Iona Wolff
Resources
As a free programme designed with educators at its core, Craft School provides a toolkit of resources to support in delivering the challenge with their learners. When enrolled, educators will have access to free Continued Professional Development (CPD) through a wide network of craft educators. There will be monthly online Educator Forums, creating a space for educators to connect, share practices, and discuss the challenge.
