The Capital of Craft Talks 2025

On Friday March 21st we will be bringing our popular podcast to life at Craft Festival Cheltenham. The Capital of Craft Talks are complimentary events for ticket holders. Simply book your seat below.

Friday March 21st 2025

11am Eating for Resilience: Optimising Mind, Mood and Energy Through Metabolic Health with Sarah Bayliss, registered nutritional therapist specialising in metabolic health.

Discover how food choices impact your mental clarity, emotional balance, and physical vitality. The talk delves into the science behind metabolic health – the cornerstone of how our bodies convert food into energy – and its profound effects on our daily functioning and long-term wellbeing.
Learn how nutrients become the building blocks of both body and mind, influencing everything from brain function and hormonal balance to energy levels and stress resilience. Discover evidence-based strategies for optimising nutrition through three key principles: protecting your metabolism, nourishing your body with essential nutrients, and energising effectively through balanced food choices.
Walk away with a deeper understanding of how to use food as your foundation for building lasting energy, stable mood, and cognitive clarity. 
Sarah’s new book, Do Nourish is an empowering guide to building a personalised plan for resilience and long-term health. Full of achievable ideas, tips, tables and food combinations, as well as a handful of simple recipes. BOOK HERE

1pm Katy Bevan talks about Connecting Threads, A Tactile Social History, by Lynn Setterington

Join Setterington’s editor and Quickthorn publisher Katy Bevan to look at her research and how it draws on popular culture, folk and textile history to be relevant to us
Lynn Setterington is a major British textile artist known for her hand-stitched quilts and embroideries. Her research is situated at the intersection of craft and community, social engagement, design and activism, creating tactile social history documents with groups and communities to interrogate social injustices and celebrate the overlooked and every day. These sensory cloths provide soft, alternative flexible forms of commemoration, in contrast to the fixed, hard memorials, ubiquitous in many parks, city centres and stadiums. BOOK HERE

3pm Homemade: A conversation about the importance of food and handmade with Kate Humble and Sarah James MBE

Kate Humble is a broadcaster and author of five books, including Thinking On My Feet, A Year of Living Simply, Home Cooked and Where the Hearth Is. A champion of the environment, nature conservation and rural affairs, she is president of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and founded Humble by Nature, a rural skills centre on her farm in Wales. She lives with her husband and other assorted animals on a smallholding in the Wye Valley.

In her latest book, Homemade, along with a wide range of recipes, Kate also offers inspiring stories from 20 individuals who play a role in bringing food to our tables, from basket weavers and apron makers to blacksmiths and woodworkers; potters and glassblowers to fishermen and cheese-makers; farmers and chocolatiers to distillers and salters. At Craft Festival Cheltenham she will be in conversation with Sarah James MBE, Craft Festival director and host of The Capital of Craft podcast. Kate will be signing copies of her book on the Quickthorn Books stand after her talk. BOOK HERE

The Capital of Craft LIVE is a complimentary event and is included in your ticket price. The talks are located on the Stage in the Main Hall. There are 4 steps up to the stage.