The Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Commonwealth Heritage Skills Training Programme

The largest Commonwealth heritage training programme in history, teaching the next generation of heritage craftsmen and craftswomen and helping to protect the Commonwealth’s historic buildings and monuments.

Designed to address heritage skills shortages across the Commonwealth nations, the programme offers up to 3,000 heritage conservation traineeships, with a focus on young people. The Programme, managed by the Commonwealth Heritage Forum, was accorded the rare privilege of using the Queen’s name in its title and will now honour the memory of our late Sovereign in perpetuity. Phase 1 supports heritage training schemes across Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, Barbados and India. Trainees are learning a range of heritage and craft skills, led by experienced local people with knowledge of the needs and priorities of local communities. Phase 2 expands the programme to up to twenty countries.

Craft your Career with Historic Environment Scotland

A programme designed to offer heritage skills training across Scotland at various career stages. 

This programme is delivering three levels of traditional skills training, with the aim of increasing traditional skills training capacity in Scotland. Pre-apprenticeships will focus on basic construction and employability skills of approximately sixty young people, with participants taking part in a sixteen-week work programme with employers and gaining a Construction Craft & Technician qualification (SCQF level 4 NPA).  The Modern Apprenticeships stream sees fifteen new apprenticeship places hosted across Scotland, with apprentices seconded to heritage contractors to gain work experience while attending a local college to complete their Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) and Professional Development Award (PDA). A Craft Fellowship stream provides eighteen-month placements for fourteen people, enabling them to work with master craftsmen to learn specific areas of traditional building skills; a secondary focus is on imparting business skills in order to improve employability.

English Cathedrals Craft Training Programme

A heritage craft training programme to repair and restore English cathedrals.

Run by the Cathedrals’ Workshop Fellowship, the programme is a craft skills education and training programme supporting the conservation of the dozen Anglican cathedrals affiliated to the CWF. It offers apprentice stonemasons, carpenters, joiners, plumbers and electricians a recognised career path and a route to higher level qualifications via tuition that enhances the traditional apprenticeship model by providing apprentices with access to master craftsmen from all of the Fellowship’s member cathedrals.

The National Schools Singing Programme

Embedding high-quality choral singing as a key activity in schools across the UK.

The National Schools Singing Programme (NSSP) is delivering high quality music tuition across all Catholic dioceses in the United Kingdom and selected Anglican cathedrals to create or enhance their own music programmes for children educated in state schools.

The programme offers whole-class singing, leading to higher achievement if students are particularly passionate about singing. A child at a participating school will typically receive a weekly whole-class singing session, led by a choral director, with regional after-school choirs available for junior and senior schoolchildren interested in taking their singing further.

Singing is uniquely accessible to all kinds of people and can bring great educational, social, and personal health benefits. It is hoped that some of our children and young people will join church and cathedral choirs and thereby contribute to the preservation and furtherance of our great choral tradition.

The Keyboard Studies Programme

An innovative keyboard studies programme designed to provide a high-quality continuous musical pathway for children at state schools across Leeds and surrounding communities.

The programme, run by the Diocese of Leeds and supported by grant funding from the Vinehill Trust, was founded in 2016 in an effort to reverse the rapid decline in students learning to play the organ. The programme is currently teaching more than 1,000 children from state schools.

In order to make the programme both engaging for students and low-cost for schools, the children begin their tuition with the melodica and have progression pathways available to enable them to learn to play the piano, accordion, and ultimately the organ.

Gabrieli Roar

Gabrieli Roar connects a network of diverse youth choirs with the Gabrieli Consort & Players, one of the UK’s leading professional ensembles. Frequently described as “completely transformational” by those involved, Roar’s vocal training programme works in partnership with schools, youth choirs, church and cathedral choirs, music education hubs and school academy trusts. It helps young people from many backgrounds to develop a love of classical music and to connect with the broader world of culture; much of its performance activity takes place in the UK’s iconic cathedrals as young people take the stage alongside many of the country’s finest musicians.

The Vinehill Trust is providing financial support over the next five years to help expand Gabrieli Roar all over the country, particularly in areas of low cultural engagement; this will enable thousands more young people to reap the benefits of this exciting and ambitious choral training programme.