Welcome to the Craft & Design Collective (formerly County Down Crafts). With over 125 members the Craft & Design Collective is the largest Craft Network in Northern Ireland. To quote one recent applicant, “Everybody who’s anybody talks about it with high regard”.

We are dedicated to the promotion, representation, understanding and development of Craft, Applied Art & Design in Northern Ireland and beyond.
To purchase or commission Craft, Applied Art & Design, visit Space CRAFT our Shop/Gallery/Exhibition Area up the escalator at The Fountain Centre, College Street, Belfast or contact our members directly.

The Importance of Craft, Applied Art & Design

Craft, Applied Art & Design makes an enduring contribution to the cultural, economic and social regeneration and tourism infrastructure of any country.
In this post-industrial world it is surprising that Crafts still exist. Machines can usually produce the objects we need for daily living much faster, less expensively and quite often more practically than Artist/Designer/Makers can hope to do. Today Crafts have to be special, well designed and well made certainly, but also expressive of the maker’s unique personality and ideas. Here and there makers still survive who have a more direct line to the tradition of the pre-industrial age, but the contemporary maker feeds off a global view of the Crafts and of the Fine Arts, to produce work that can delight, amuse, startle and sometimes even change our own outlook on life…