£10m to help keep heritage skills alive across UK

MORE than £10m is to go to training people in heritage skills from dry stone walling to rigging and repairing traditional wooden sailing ships.

The funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund is supporting projects across the UK that will train a “new and more diverse generation of heritage workers” in areas from traditional crafts to digital specialists.

In Scotland, the cash has gone towards three projects, including nearly £600,000 to Museums Galleries Scotland to create a series of traineeships and a £377,000 fund for Skills for Rewilding.

In this project, 15 trainees will develop kills needed to enable them to work on largescale natural heritage projects.

Based at Trees for Life’s Dundreggan Conservation Estate, they will be taught skills in horticulture, native woodland and deer management, biological surveying and engaging rural communities.

Another £496,200 is going to the Next Step Initiative, which will create 16 traineeships to enable minority ethnic and cultural communities learn new heritage skills.

The £10.1m funding is being shared between 18 projects across the UK.

While it is not a job creation scheme, the Skills for the Future programme has seen 75 per cent of trainees securing a job in heritage following their training, HLF said.

Lucy Casot, head of the Heritage Lottery Fund in Scotland, said: “We know that our Skills for the Future programme is driving successful and lasting change.

“It’s providing a muchneeded pool of talented people who will be the future guardians of the heritage sector.”

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