From Robin: Apprenticeships and Heritage

Just a few thoughts I wanted to share.

I have been having a look to see if Sheffield Council have a policy on which parts of the cutlery industry they wish to promote and preserve.

It seems a little like the national position as if no one has realised that this is part of our cultural heritage. The whole idea of living heritage does not seem to have been understood yet despite the UNESCO convention on living heritage in 2003. So there is a culture service plan which can be downlodaed here.

http://www.sheffield.gov.uk/libraries/about-our-service/culture-service-plan-2008---09
Other than the Galvanize festival the majority of the plan is to do with museums, galleries and sport.

Culture services mission statement is;

Mission Statement
More people, more culturally active, more often.

I think that if you asked an average person in the streets of Sheffield they would consider cutlery as being an important part of their culture. Look at all the pub names, they even have a football team nicknamed the Blades yet culture services do not recognise, make use of it or build on it. It presents tremendous opportunity for them to increase their audience because a different sector of Sheffield folk may be interested in cutlery but wouldn't visit art galleries and libraries (objective 4 in plan and building on work already started with Galvanize)

I feel we need to call a meeting with all the city MP's and opposition candidates, relevant council people, particularly from culture services, and as many working craftspeople and general supporters of the cause as we can muster. This would hopefully lead to a plan being drawn up to decide what is of value and what we are going to do to preserve and promote it.

On another matter apprenticeships. How have you progressed with the idea? I am in discussion with a few other folk including Kutrite and Wadworths brewery;
Around Christmas Alastair Simms the "last master cooper" at Wadworth's was in the press a lot. I heard after the press that he had 1000 folk write asking to be his apprentice. I have just been in correspondence with him to see how things were going. It seems the brewery can not get a grant for the apprentice working with Mr Simms. The only grants available are for off site training if the apprentice does an NVQ in production.

At Kutrite again they can get money for off site training for a basic NVQ in vaguely related subjects but no support for on the job training under 3 master craftsmen with 130 years experience between them.

It seems to me we need to find a way of getting money made available for training in this sort of situation.

Robin