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Celebrate Craft Ontario: 50 Years in the Making
Celebrate Craft Ontario: 50 Years in the Making

Craft Ontario celebrates turning fifty in 2026!

Since 1976, we have championed craft artists, connecting them to audiences, opportunity, and each other. This year we celebrate the makers, materials, and community behind that work, and the resilience that sustains it. It is also a time to imagine what the future of craft can be and should be, and to build support for Craft Ontario's next chapter, including our new flagship at 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, opening in summer 2027.

From October 2026 through spring 2027, we are gathering with partners across Ontario, publishing maker and community profiles, and celebrating with an anniversary gala in early 2027.

Celebrate with us, share a story, support the work, and speak up for craft, through our anniversary theme, Resilience in Craft: Makers Adapting, Enduring, and Shaping the Future.

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This series profiles the work of Craft Ontario members and their ties to the organization. In conversations and studio visits, we discuss challenges facing makers today, how the landscape of the craft market has changed, why makers continue on, and how they see craft meeting the current moment. 

Steve Heinemann: Closer to the Source

Steve Heinemann: Closer to the Source

Steve Heinemann is a ceramic artist whose work is in many collections around the world, he received the Saidye Bronfman Award for Excellence in Canadian Craft in 1996, and the Gardiner held a retrospective of his work, Culture and Nature, in 2017. He reflects on how his career launched with support from Craft Ontario and his hopes for the future of craft. 

Read Profile

support

Craft Ontario is a registered charity, and this year's giving campaign supports our next chapter. Your gift helps sustain our programs, support makers across Ontario, and open our new flagship at 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, in summer 2027. Give, join, or renew your membership. Donations are eligible for a tax receipt.

Advocate

Craft is still underfunded and underrepresented in Ontario's cultural life. In 2023, it contributed over $1.68 billion to Ontario's GDP and supported an average of 15,900 jobs. Three things need attention now: public funding for the arts, the loss of craft education in Ontario, and the effect of US tariffs on makers. Write to your MPP or MP, add your name, and tell them craft deserves public investment.

Invest in the Arts

Public funding for the arts has stalled or shrunk while costs rise. Ask your elected representatives to invest in the arts, including craft.
Find your MPP

Save Craft Education in Ontario

Craft programs at colleges and universities across Ontario are facing suspended intake, fewer courses, and cuts. Write to your MPP and help protect the next generation of makers.
Read the update

Tariffs and Our Craft Community

US tariffs are cutting into makers' sales and adding costs and paperwork. Find support and make your voice heard.
Read the overview

celebrate

Three events hosted with partners across Ontario, then our anniversary gala in early 2027. Each looks at what keeps craft going and where it goes next: how it is taught, how it sustains a local economy, and how it grows through community and place. Event details forthcoming – check back or subscribe to our newsletter to be notified.

Teaching the Trade

A panel on the future of craft education in Ontario, in partnership with the Haliburton School of Art + Design. Details TBA

Making It Local

A conversation on locally made craft as a working part of a resilient economy, at a time of shifting cross-border trade. In partnership with the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum. Details TBA

Community & Place

An artist talk and knowledge-sharing circle on the relationship between clay, place, and community, in partnership with the Art Gallery of Burlington. Details TBA

Anniversary Gala

Our flagship celebration of fifty years, bringing together makers, collectors, patrons, and supporters, with a silent and live auction of donated works by Ontario makers. Details TBA

Visual Identity

The 50th anniversary visual identity was created by Toronto-based designer Rachel Wallace. The mark pairs a bold, sculptural "5" with a wheel of colour segments that references the many makers and a shared community, and it complements the Craft Ontario logo. Rachel took her cues from the tactility of craft and the repetitive, specialized skills it demands. A series of pattern icons draw on weaving, ceramics, metalwork, woodworking, beadwork and quillwork. One of them, a decorative knot, is a nod to Burton Kramer's original logo for the Ontario Crafts Council.