Education Programme / Building Crafts Apprentices

The Prince of Wales’s
Building Crafts Apprentices

Building Crafts Apprentices working on a construction

The Prince of Wales’s Building Crafts Apprentices scheme is an eight-month programme of applied study which offers building craftspeople the opportunity to enhance and advance their design knowledge and experience in traditional and sustainable building crafts.

HRH The Prince of Wales has highlighted the severe shortage of skilled craftspeople in the construction industry and the impact this has had on building sustainable communities. The decline of traditional skills worldwide poses a danger to the heritage sector, to new building construction, and to identifying with our cultural heritage and sense of place.

The Prince of Wales’s Building Crafts Apprentices scheme offers talented, enthusiastic and committed craftspeople the opportunity to enhance their vocational skills with the design knowledge, work experience and coaching necessary to succeed in a career in the traditional building sector.

We are looking for building craftspeople who want to bridge the gap between basic qualifications and becoming a master craftsperson. Successful applicants will be rewarded with an eight-month programme of courses and work placements, during which they will be given the opportunity to develop their craftsmanship and use their skills in a broad, holistic building context alongside other building professionals.

The programme comprises an intensive, three-week Residential Summer School; and seven months of work placements with master craftspeople on traditional new building schemes and conservation projects.

Disciplines covered by the programme:

Stonemasonry
Carpentry
Joinery
Bricklaying
Roofing and Tiling
Plastering
Glazing
Thatching
Metalwork
Stained Glass

Download the Building Crafts Apprentices Flyer [1.6Mb]

Who can apply

Applications are welcomed from craftspeople who have studied any of a wide variety of building skills. Applicants must have attained either a United Kingdom NVQ/SVQ Level 3 or equivalent from a centre of vocational excellence, or an equivalent qualification in traditional building skills from a recognised authority.

Applications close 26 February 2010

For more information on how to apply, please click here.

HRH The Prince of Wales’s New Orleans Renewal and Building Crafts Training Program

Regeneration of a typical New Orleans house
Image: John Robert PortmanThe three week residential school began on 12 October 2009 with 21 apprentices from New Orleans. Lasting five months, the Prince of Wales’s New Orleans Renewal and Building Crafts Training Program delivers the skills urgently needed to regenerate and rebuild New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf Coast, preserve the unique architecture of the region as well as ultimately helping the populations most affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans: the urban poor. FIND OUT MORE »