Craft gives us a big-picture view of our history and development as a country and a people. It’s a cornucopia, covering cultures and climates, philosophies and science, social causes and social action. It’s about discipline, excitement, and creativity.

Each of the episodes of Craft in America – Memory, Landscape, Community, Origins and Process – has lesson plans written by arts educators. The “Learn More” links below lead you to the specific show and the extensive guides designed for them, which you can read online for a sense of the material, and download in a printable pdf format. You’ll find they cover areas and issues that extend well beyond a “how-to” demonstration.

Some hands create to record a place and time; others are more intimate gestures about personal histories. In any case our Nation’s collective memory can become tangible when we examine objects created by the hand.
Browse the Memory Education Guides

Craft artists depend on their natural environment for both materials and inspiration. Materials are collected, combined and transformed through the creativity of human hands.
Browse the Landscape Education Guides

Community has helped shape the creative processes of our collective craft history. Craft forms are passed from generation to generation in necessity and survival, but also for the spirit of community and commonality.
Browse the Community Education Guides

There is great value in making an object by hand with time-honored techniques, using traditional designs. And there is an excitement in combining and reinventing these traditions with present-day ideas and motifs.
Browse the Origins Education Guides

Artists are inspired in various ways - through collaboration, personal reflection and often, through the materials themselves. In the process, objects are given meaning, connections formed, and boundaries broken.
Browse the Process Education Guides