The Lace Guild’s submission to the UK list of Living Heritage

Many of you are undoubtedly already aware that, in 2025, bobbin lacemaking was added to the Heritage Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts.

Heritage Crafts is the UK national charity for traditional heritage crafts. They are a UNESCO accredited NGO for Intangible Cultural Heritage (also called Living Heritage). They are an official Community Support Hub for the UK Government’s Living Heritage in the UK inventory, and have advocated for UK ratification of the UNESCO Convention of the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2010. The UK ratified the UNESCO convention in 2024.

The first round of submissions has been invited for the UK Government’s Inventories of Living Heritage.

The Lace Guild believes that lacemaking should be on this inventory.

We submitted an entry for bobbin lacemaking on 13th March 2026. This submission is on behalf of all lacemakers, not just Lace Guild members.

A big thank you to all who participated in our survey, and to those who prepared the submission.

Our submission will now go to the Review and Decision Panels. If accepted, it will be prepared for publication. It is expected that the first inventories will be published in about 4 – 6 months. Watch this space!

UPDATE 24th April 2026

Our submission has passed the initial compliance check and has now gone on to the next stage. Hopefully we will hear more in about 10-12 weeks.

We hope to submit other types of hand made lace in future rounds.