Conservation Group – Traditional Skills & Materials Section Knowledge Transfer; Traditional Skills for the Future Conservation Group – Traditional Skills

Conservation Group – Traditional Skills & Materials Section

Knowledge Transfer; Knowledge Transfer; Traditional Skills for the FutureTraditional Skills for the Future

Conservation Group –

Traditional Skills &

Materials Section


Traditional Building SkillsTraditional Building Skills The VisionThe VisionOur vision is a world leading system of traditional skills training that meets the needs of a modern, innovative and competitive construction sector to ensure that it is equipped to fulfil its role in creating and maintaining the Scottish built environment of the future, and making a significant contribution to the economic recovery.


Traditional Skills & MaterialsTraditional Skills & Materials

• Scotland’s historic environment is a vital part of Scotland’s culture and its economy.

• Scotland has around 450,000 traditionally constructed buildings

• Enhancing our historic environment cannot be adequately achieved without the appropriate skills and materials to conserve and maintain our traditional buildings.


DeliveryDelivery1. Encourage better repair and maintenance of the current

building stock and by demonstrating the vital role traditional building skills have in the construction sector to accomplish that.

2. Improve the standard, consistency and availability of skills training to ensure the supply of skills, training and qualifications can meet and is responsive to what is needed for future success.

3. Lead the world in achieving a better understanding of and the capability to demonstrate the relevance of traditional skills to our current building stock in terms of energy efficiency, sustainability and conservation gain.


Main IssuesMain Issues


On-goingOn-goingNational Progression Award in Conservation of Masonry & HLF Bursary Scheme

•1st Qualification of its kind in the UK

•250 plus individuals

•Valued by ‘the outside world,’ industry recognised.

• Telford, CoGC, Moray College, Orkney Colleges

•Great progression into employment


Skills for the Future BursarySkills for the Future Bursary• Funding from Heritage Lottery Fund• Partnership with Historic Scotland

– National Trust for Scotland– Angus College– Dundee College– Supported by Learn Direct & Build and Construction

Skills• Stand alone bursary with Knockando Wollen Mill

Trust, • Funded through HS Craft Fellowship

Programme


Skills for the Future BursarySkills for the Future Bursary• Placements will be for 12 months duration• A bursary of £14,500 • An allowance for travel, tools and any Personal

Protective Equipment required.• Funding to achieve Qualifications • Gain experience on different work sites through

out their placement.• Encouraged to plan for the end of their

placement• Support moves into the heritage sector as either

employee or starting up a small business.


Skills for the Future BursarySkills for the Future Bursary

• Heritage Engineering ( 5 Bursary Places)

• Laser Scanning of Traditional Buildings (4 Bursary Places)

• Traditional Skills in Angus. ( 6 Bursary Holders)

• Energy Saving & Carbon Reduction in the Heritage Sector (4 Bursary Places)


Heritage EngineeringHeritage Engineering• Partnership to preserve traditional skills at risk of dying out.• Developed jointly by NTS and Historic Scotland, • New training programme to excite people from diverse

backgrounds to gain and develop heritage engineering skills through work based training.

• Acquire a broad range of practical skills through placements at project partner sites.

• On the job training alongside skilled staff will enable apprentices to gain hands on experience of operating machinery, together with its ongoing maintenance, conservation and repair.

• Relevant external courses will support wider or accredited learning when necessary.


Heritage EngineeringHeritage Engineering• Acquire knowledge and practical expertise in the

following heritage engineering processes:• woollen and linen handlooms (maintenance, repair and

operation of original working hand looms, ancient crafts of weaving, spinning and dyeing wool using natural dyes)

• printing press machinery (typesetting, imposition, printing, machine maintenance and the conservation of the equipment and skills required for a letterpress printing works)

• watermill structure and machinery (waterwheels and turbines; mill shafting, gears and bearings; metal / timber hurst frames; millstone reassembly.


Heritage EngineeringHeritage Engineering

• Heritage engineering relies on older people

• Strong interest in previous craft fellowships offered in this field

• Demand for people to move into this field.

• Small Numbers

• But significant increase in capacity


Barry Mill, AngusBarry Mill, Angus

• Working Category A Listed Watermill• It is owned and operated by the National Trust

for Scotland as an educational tourist attraction. • It is a three floor building, containing a meal floor

(basement), a milling floor and a top (or "bin floor").

• A site for several mills since at least 1539, Barry Mill was commercially operational until 1984; it was then restored, and has been operated by the Trust since 1992.





Robert Smails Printing Works, Robert Smails Printing Works, InnerleithanInnerleithan

• A fully functional Victorian era letterpress & printing works, acquired in 1986 by the NTS

• Opened in 1990 showing visitors the operation of a local printer around 1900

• Still carrying out orders for printing and stationery.• The firm was established in 1866, carrying out print jobs

for the local community as well as operating a stationer's shop, and between 1893 and 1916 published a weekly newspaper.

• Remained in the ownership of the Smail family, who made little effort to keep up with twentieth-century advances in technology,

• Visitors are shown the process as well as try hand typesetting, and the opportunity to print their own work.




Knockando Woolmill, Speyside Knockando Woolmill, Speyside • A-listed group of buildings in the Spey Valley.• Contains original textile machinery acquired over the centuries. • At the heart of the local community; listed as the 'Wauk Mill' in parish records

from 1784, the mill has since maintained its traditions of spinning and weaving through generations of families.

• Knockando Woolmill grew gradually as the mechanisation of textile production developed elsewhere in the UK.

• Product of 18th and 19th century farm diversification. • When times were good, the Woolmill tenant would buy a new (usually second

hand) piece of machinery. He would extend the Mill building just enough to keep the weather off the machine; being a thrifty farmer, he reused doors and windows from elsewhere. This has resulted in the surviving tiny, ramshackle building stuffed full of historic machinery and redolent of the labours previous generations.

• Spinning and weaving went hand in hand with agriculture at Knockando. There would be little work carried on in the Mill during sowing or harvest time but after shearing, local farmers would bring in their fleeces to be processed and take them away as blankets and tweed cloth. Many communities had their own local district woollen mill, but the majority of these disappeared between the two World Wars.


Knockando Woolmill, Speyside Knockando Woolmill, Speyside • Restoration was planned quicker than the new

Bursary Scheme could be brought on-line• Funded through our Craft Fellow Programme• Nathaniel Havinden, Knockando Craft Fellow• Recording, stripping back and dismantling the

machinery• Supervising the moving of the machinery to a

new storage building• Reconstructing the machinery in restored Mill• Making in operational to enable production of

textiles to begin again












Skills for the Future BursarySkills for the Future Bursary Heritage Engineering Heritage Engineering

• Good way to support projects and small enterprises

• Provide training that the ‘mainstream’ can’t or won’t address

• Building Capacity & providing opportunities

• Passing on Skills and Expertise before they are lost

• Small numbers but hopefully a big impact


Skills for the Future BursarySkills for the Future Bursary Heritage Engineering Heritage Engineering

• The Way Forward?– What else is out there?– What skills are at risk?

• HLF already looking at the development of the next programme

• HS interested to hear about other areas and crafts that may need our support


Documents

Conservation Group – Traditional Skills & Materials Section Knowledge Transfer; Traditional Skills for the Future Conservation Group – Traditional Skills