Arts & Life

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Kansas City is keeping heritage crafts and historic art forms alive. Here's where to learn them

KCUR | By Libby Hanssen

Published September 20, 2025 at 4:00 AM CDT

A man wearing a denim shirt and a vest, with a long apron over his trousers, hammers a rod of red hot iron on an anvil. — Blacksmithing, one of the crafts demonstrated at Missouri Town Living History Museum, is one of the many heritage crafts practiced by interpreters and artisans around Kansas City.

At the Kansas City Renaissance Fair and beyond, you can explore historic arts and heritage crafts — including blacksmithing, armor and chainmail making, basket weaving and more — with local artisans, classes, and clubs.

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Not so long ago, if you needed something for your home, work, or body, you made it yourself.

Just a few generations ago, many people wove their own fabric, made their own clothes, grew their own food, fixed their own machinery, made their own bags, baskets, and dining ware, and whiled away the dark winter hours creating handicrafts…using the candles they made from beeswax or tallow.

Some of these crafts you can dive into at the Kansas City Renaissance Fair, which is taking place in Bonner Springs now through Oct. 13.

But you’ll also find artisans around the Kansas City area keeping these heritage traditions alive through practice and education at clubs, festivals, studios, and museums.

Institute for Historic & Educational Arts

A person in a purple teeshirt tries on a helmet and two gauntlets at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. — Visitors to the Kansas City Renaissance Fair can learn about examples of arts and crafts from the Renaissance era, such as armor and chainmail-making, blacksmithing, textile arts, pottery, and more.

While the Kansas City Renaissance Festival welcomes an amalgam of time periods and styles, both historic and fantastical, inside you’ll also find the Living History Program run by Kansas City’s Institute for Historic & Educational Arts.

That program aims to demonstrate the crafts and skills of the actual Renaissance era.

During the RenFest’s run, stop by the Living History cart near the King’s Gate to pick up a Living History card, then travel throughout the festival in search of these talented creators for an informative scavenger hunt of sorts. From the 12 locations scattered from the Children’s Realm to the Wildewood, observe demonstrations at six or more stations to earn a prize.

During the festival, you’ll find a huge influx of craftspeople participating in the two-month event. Many booths also offer their handmade goods for sale and many also take commissions.

If you’re intrigued by a craft, consider taking a class through IHEA, in blacksmithing, leather tooling, wood working, weaving, pottery, armor and chainmail making, and more. Classes are offered on selected dates throughout the year, outside of the Renaissance Festival.

For more information about Renaissance and Medieval era arts and crafts, you can check out the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), which has resources for skills such as creating period pigments and inkle weaving. The Kansas City branch is dubbed The Barony of Forgotten Sea in the Kingdom of Calontir.

Living history museums

A woman in 1800s period clothing makes thread while sitting in an open-sided tent. — At area living history museums, such as Missouri Town, interpreters and artisans demonstrate arts and crafts practiced in earlier eras.

You can find plenty of authentic historic crafts on hand year round at the many living history museums around Kansas City, where interpreters demonstrate life skills from different eras through historical reenactment.

Jackson County Parks and Recreation hosts tours, field trips, classes, and festivals at their historic sites.

At Missouri Town, interpreters emulate daily country life in the 1850s, including blacksmithing, tinsmithing, and textile arts. Missouri Town’s 49th annual Fall Festival of Arts, Crafts and Music is Oct. 5 and 6.

Along with crafts recognizable today, there will be demonstrations of “lost arts,” skills from bygone eras, from organizations like the Osage Spinners and Weavers, Missouri Free Trappers, and the Missouri Basketweavers Guild, Inc., as well as old time music from the Missouri Town Band.

Fort Osage is a frontier-era military trading post near Sibley, Missouri. From time to time, Fort Osage hosts “Men’s Academy” and “Ladies’ Academy,” which shows teenagers some of the many skills people used during day-to-day life in the early 1800s, so watch the events page for more information.

Coming up, there is a woodworking class teaching how to use the hand tools of the era.

Shawnee Indian Mission Fall Festival

A woman in 1800s period clothing explains different types of lye soap available to a woman in a blue coat and hat. — Local festivals are another option for finding historic arts and heritage craft artisans, who often demonstrate their craft and sell their products.

The Shawnee Indian Mission Fall Festival brings the surrounding neighborhoods together to see what life was like during the mid-1800s. Living history interpreters demonstrate what people packed in their overland wagons, how fur trappers lived and made their living, and other traditional crafts.

There are blacksmith demonstrations, a fresh apple cider press, soap maker, marble maker and basket weaver, as well as a wagon ride, like what the pioneers would have traveled west on.

You can also find handmade goods in the site’s shop, Three Springs Market.

More craft-tastic organizations around Kansas City

An interpreter is Renaissance Festival garb talks to a patron about period practice beekeeping, using an illustration. — At area clubs, classes, organizations and festivals, learn about historic arts and heritage crafts, such as period practice beekeeping and beeswax candlemaking.

There are many ways to explore heritage crafts, whether raising the sheep yourself for your next knitting project or using historical techniques with modern materials.

Here are a few more options for learning about traditional crafts.

Blacksmithing

Textile arts