Hamish Ogston Foundation Heritage Building Skills Programme

Image © Historic England

Historic England has recently announced an exciting new partnership with the Hamish Ogston foundation (click here for details). The Foundation’s generous pledge of £3.5 million will support skills training and employment in the construction industry, particularly focussing on the skills needed to conserve historic buildings. All training delivered as part of the programme will include work on live Heritage at Risk sites in the North of England.

The funding will be utilised to support several tiers of work-based training. It will establish placement opportunities for full time students and apprenticeships in core construction trades like bricklaying, painting and decorating, plastering, stonemasonry, carpentry and joinery, and roofing. As we develop the programme in detail, we would like to talk to heritage construction companies about supporting and benefitting from aspects of this programme. The meeting will provide a valuable opportunity for us to further explain the programme, particularly the T Level and apprenticeship elements. There will also be plenty of opportunity for participants to post questions of Historic England staff helping to develop the programme.

About the Speakers

Sophie Norton developed a professional interest in the longstanding decline of skills for historic building conservation while working at the University of York. As Hamlyn Feilden Fellow and Heritage Skills Co-ordinator in the Archaeology Department, Sophie supported teaching in the Centre for Conservation Studies while developing initiatives to address heritage skills challenges in the Yorkshire region. This included working with the York Consortium on a project that brought together several traditional estates in North Yorkshire to train a small cohort of building craft apprentices. Since 2018, Sophie has worked as Sector Skills Manager for Historic England, where she is involved in work to address heritage skills shortages across England.

 

Phil Pollard is the Heritage Apprenticeships Manager at Historic England. Working at the interface between vocational learning and traditional education his work provides provide support for the development and implementation of heritage apprenticeship standards and other employability and skills initiatives (e.g. Kickstart scheme) for the historic environment sector. Phil has a degree in Archaeology from the University of York and a background in training, work based learning, and higher education skills development; having worked on local authority heritage training programmes, specialist traineeships and doctoral training initiatives across a range of subject areas within heritage.