Learning a lesson from masters of the Renaissance

Those days are long gone, and heritage businesses say they are struggling to afford the time to pass on their skills to young people.

Now J Rotherham, a family stonemason business, has published a vision for a Renaissance-style fellowship community, which would bring back old master craftsman training while also addressing social issues, including teenage pregnancy.

The business, which has sites in York, Selby, Scarborough and Driffield, was set up at the turn of the 20th century by Henry Rotherham and has been training its own stonemasons for four generations.

Jamie Rotherham, who owns the business today, trained at the Charles Cecil Atelier in Florence, and has focused the business on exportable skills, which has led it to take on 30 new staff, including two apprentices, in 2010, boosting its workforce to about 100.

But the business says it lacks new talent, with young people being encouraged to aspire towards academia, which led it to release its vision for an Academy of Art and Craftsmanship led by employers.

Anna Buckley, marketing director at J Rotherham, said the company required lots of different skills, which made it difficult to find a qualification that suit what it does.

“There’s a frustration with how training is done and not done and there’s a lack of young people coming through in the right way and a lack of skilful people out there to call on. In York and Yorkshire in particular, we have such a wealth of really beautiful old buildings we’re just not going to be able to look after if we’re not careful.

“You could look at one individual business but that’s not going to stop the problem.

This is a more holistic approach. If you put creative people, like craftspeople, in an environment with lots of other people, it creates its own energy and people can bounce ideas off each other and find solutions.

“Looking back at the Renaissance, what made that such a creative period was because there were so many brilliant masters teaching groups of young people, which gave them that competitive edge,” she says.

The vision document is a call to arms to fellow crafts businesses, in stone carving, masonry, cabinet making, woodworkers, stained glass, blacksmiths and other crafts to come together to build a centre of excellence for training in naturalistic art, carving and crafts and heritage skills.

It says: “Today’s companies and individuals are expected not only to dedicate their own productive time towards the training, but also to pay the unskilled individual for the training. Aligned with this, many young people do not recognise the value of this training, with record numbers of young people failing to complete their training or failing in the workplace when they start a job.”

J Rotherham owns 17 acres next to its headquarters at Holme-on-Spalding-Moor on which it proposes to build the centre, which would be set up as a social enterprise.

It would house workshops for crafts-based businesses, from which the rents would be used to pay the craftspeople for the training and provide scholarships and bursaries for young people who needed them.

It would be a community for artists and craftspeople to produce their own work and train apprentices, based on the ‘atelier’ system, where a master craftsperson would have a number of apprentices working for them at different levels over a significant period of time and a community of like-minded individuals would hark back to the fellowships of the Renaissance times, with people learning from each other and spurring each other on.

The administration work related to training would be centralised, so the craftspeople can focus purely on the imparting of knowledge. The vision states that the centre would also provide a nursery to encourage female trades people, particularly providing a career for teenage mothers, as well as life skills classes in subjects such as parenting classes, and holding meditation and yoga sessions to help the young people through their studies.

The business is starting on its way to this new positive working environment by developing its own NVQ, because it says no current qualification represents the top level of skills its employees have.

It is also seeking funding for the building of the centre and is looking for support from skilled craftspeople who are passionate about training and would like to be part of the community.

Nurturing vital talent

William Anelay, one of York’s oldest businesses, takes on apprentices learning to be masons, joiners and bricklayers.

Managing director Vernon Carter says that they are then mentored by the firm’s experienced trades and craftspeople in restoration projects.

He says heritage construction has felt the effect of reduced local authority spending.

“It’s a really difficult situation because the economy is what it is. The construction industry was one of the first and hardest hit and you have to have the projects for people to be able to do,” he says.

At the moment the business employs five to six apprentices at various levels, including roofers, joiners and masons. It appoints apprentices in line with succession planning for its 100 staff.

He says: “We get approached on a regular basis by individuals looking to take on an apprenticeship and are keen to learn a skill and trade. It’s an assumption that everybody wants to go down the academic route.

“As things turn around it’s inevitably going to improve and there will be a demand for more skilled people. It’s something that will always continue,” he says.

Forging a way to get right skills

BLACKSMITH Chris Topp and Co, which specialises in ancient ironwork, says individuals as well as businesses need to take their own initiative to get the right skills.

The business was instrumental in setting up the National Heritage Ironwork Group, an association principally of blacksmiths alongside heritage organisations, which received a Skills For The Future grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to train blacksmiths specialising in heritage with a view to get them accredited.

The first students, who will already have some experience, will start their training later this month at Hampton Court Palace in Hereford, learning about important wrought iron work, such as the palace’s Tijou screens. And after a college element, they will then take on placements at employers around the country, including Chris Topp.

Chris says the firm of 15 employees regularly takes on “journeymen”, students who ask to work for them for a period of time. They are paid for their work, but they have to have some experience under their belt to be of use to the company.

“We get people, often from abroad, including France, Denmark and Poland, come to learn for three to four weeks. If they're any good we pay them, if not we ask them to leave.

“It's not an easy market place out there. People have to earn their corner or at least a substantial part of it.”

He says the company does do in-house training, but they can’t afford to train people from scratch because it takes about seven years to learn the job.

“The difficulty is competition against mass produced objects because generally people don't value objects as much as they used to do because of the cheap stuff.

“Very often people come and learn by watching and if they show any aptitude, they get in the tools to do the job.

“One of the best blacksmiths on the circuit used to come in here on a Tuesday night and give me £10 a week for coke to practice on his own.

“He's flying and it shows the kind of dedication that guy had, he more or less trained himself.”