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Summary Proceedings Action on Skills: Day One
Summary Proceedings Action on Skills: Day Two

Action on Skills Training and Education for the Historic Environment was an ICOMOS-UK organised conference which took place at the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment in London on 29-30 April 2008.

The conference was also the venue for launching the the NHTG (National Heritage Training Group) research reports into the ‘Built Heritage Sector Professionals’ and the ‘Traditional Building Craft Skills – England 2008’.

These reports provided hard quantitative evidence of the need for more integrated skills training and education for the built environment and showed that progress had been made since the ICOMOS-UK Workshop: Conservation in Architectural Education: Making the Case at the University of Bath in 2005.

Built Heritage Sector Professionals – Summary Report (PDF)
Built Heritage Sector Professional – Full Report (PDF)

Traditional Building Craft Skills – Executive Summary (PDF)
Traditional Building Craft Skills – Full Report (PDF)

The aims of the conference was to bring together craftspeople, building professionals, policy-makers, educationalists, trainers, students and trainees to:

• Raise the profile and status of skills training and education and the essential role they play in sustaining the historic environment
• Highlight the need to link the development of historic environment training and skills to the wider Government agendas on climate change, sustainability and energy efficiency
• Promote the wider social, and economic benefits that heritage skills can deliver through informed conservation, repair and maintenance

At the end of the conference, the need for co-ordinated action across the whole built conservation sector was discussed with a view to meeting the challenges set up in the two NHTG Reports.

The conference supported the creation of a Heritage Skills Task Force to include organisations representing professionals, policy-makers, educationalists, trainers and craftspeople and thus allow the sector to have a coordinated focus on training and skills, share common issues and promote concerted and consistent action. ICOMOS-UK offered to facilitate this Task Force.

Our Vice-President, James Simpson OBE, commented on the challenges of taking action on skills training:

“The best training is ‘on the job’; we need practitioners and firms, who will develop skills in response to demand and a flexible, responsive small grants scheme which will support them in doing so. I remain utterly wedded to the principle of this sort of support, which was given by the former Crafts Council Conservation Committee and in Scotland by the Conservation Bureau. The most important event for training in modelling and plasterwork was the Uppark fire: the demand generated has stood us in good stead in that particular field ever since.

What we need is support for a steady demand for good work. There is no shortage of good people desperately keen to learn, to develop and pass on skills, and to do the work, both individuals and firms, small and large. What they need is recognition, carefully targetted support and confidence that they will have some sort of continuity of good quality work.”

Summary Proceedings of the Action on Skills Conference

Summary proceedings are are based on notes taken throughout the conference by ICOMOS-UK Member Paul Simons.

The nature of taking notes during conference papers means that a number of abbreviations have been used, particularly acronyms.  We hope this does not detract from the use of these proceedings as an important resource and with further time and resources we wish to expand on them to improve clarity.

(N.B. Bullet points highlighted in italics are intended to summarise the key points of the presentations but only reflect the opinion of the note taker.)

View Conference programme (note: there were some changes to the advertised)
Go to Action on Skills: Day One
Go to Action on Skills: Day Two