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Skills Resilience: an Interview with Phil Pollard, Heritage Career Pathways Manager at Historic England

As part of the Skills theme of our Sector Resilience Interview series, we heard from Phil Pollard, Heritage Career Pathways Manager at Historic England, all about the aims, objectives, and upcoming opportunities to engage with the Historic Environment Skills Forum
Read on to find out more.
Phil, tell us a bit about yourself and your role in the heritage sector.

I work in the Sector Resilience and Skills department at Historic England. We focus on enhancing the resilience of the heritage sector to address existing and emerging challenges. Our work aims to ensure the sector can adapt, grow, and remain relevant for future generations. The department’s key areas of focus include sector workforce development, connectivity, collaboration, and thought leadership.

As Heritage Career Pathways Manager, I particularly look at things such as: monitoring workforce health; developing sector workforce policy; advising the government on challenges and potential solutions; piloting interventions; and supporting infrastructure development to facilitate these efforts.

What can you share with us about the Historic Environment Skills Forum? Where did originate from and what does it aim to achieve?

The Historic Environment Skills Forum, formed in November 2022, is a cross-sector initiative responding directly to Action 1.1 of the HEF’s Heritage Sector Resilience Plan. It unites employers, professional bodies, and sub-sector forums to coordinate skills-related activities across the sector and between sub-sectors; ensuring they are evidenced, effective, and responsive to demand. The forum facilitates the sharing of good practices and resources across organisations and sub-sectors.

Prior to its establishment, a Ministerial Round Table in June 2022 identified common strategic challenges in various professional areas within the heritage sector, leading to the endorsement of the Skills Forum as a collaborative platform to try and address these.

Historic England leads the forum, providing the Chair and hosting the online workspace for coordination. Membership is open to anyone working in the historic environment who wants to be actively involved in shaping the sector’s skills landscape. It is led by a Steering Group representing different occupational areas within the historic environment.

What contribution do you think the Skills Forum is making towards heritage sector resilience?

The Skills Forum’s overarching goal is to ensure that the right skills exist in the workforce to care for our historic environment, and that employers value and demand those skills. We aren’t interested in skills development and career progression for the sake of it; rather in ensuring we have the right skills to meet demand, and a resilient workforce that can ensure we have a historic environment that people connect with, learn from, and that we are proud to pass on to future generations.

In that way the Skills Forum is the place where the difficult questions will be asked around which areas should be prioritised (with regards to improving the skills and careers landscape) in a land of limited funding and resources. This prioritisation is really important to do in order to have the “one voice” that government (and funders!) are looking for.

In terms of how the Skills Forum is already contributing to the resilience of the sector, we have created a space for knowledge and resource sharing between different aspects of the sector and are going to be launching a publicly accessible resource hub for skills in 2024 as part of a wider sector resource hub.

What does success look like for the Skills Forum – how do you plan to measure this?

In Summer 2023 the Skills Forum published a Strategic Statement of Intent document which outlined three key areas members of the Forum commit to:

  1. To openly discuss the skills challenges and the different initiatives that organisations are undertaking to address these; ensuring good practices and resources are shared across the sector and mutual support is provided
  2. To provide a clear shared evidence base using information gathered from discussion and through directing specific research into identifying the current and future demand for historic environment skills; analysing where gaps and shortages are; and identifying the metrics and indicators which will allow us to prioritise areas to address and be used to show progress
  3. To produce and oversee a multi-year Historic Environment Skills and Careers Action Plan for England that drives activity across the sector. This will set a shared agenda, with shared performance indicators that will shape skills development for the future. Through this we will:
    • Seek investment and support to deliver against our objectives
    • Monitor and report on activity in order to regularly review evidence and update priorities.

 

Success for the Skills Forum will be seeing the Action Plan published, updated annually, and most importantly, being used by the sector to drive their activity around skills.

How can colleagues support the efforts of the Skills Forum or get involved in discussions?

They can become members of the Skills Forum themselves! They can do this by joining the online community, which is hosted on Heritage Workspace (on the Knowledge Hub platform). There they can engage in and post their own discussion topics, add resources to the library, share knowledge and experience, and importantly, comment on draft documents such e.g. priority needs, action plans etc.

The success of the Skills Forum in making a difference is largely dependent on organisations in the sector feeling ownership for the Action Plan, so I would really encourage colleagues to engage with it, using the online community. Don’t be idle and wait for someone else to post a discussion topic – raise one yourself, and join in with existing conversations!

The Skills Forum has also just launched a new webinar series, which will take place quarterly and each will focus on a different key issue with regards to skills. The first of these is coming up soon on Wednesday 6th December, and will be a discussion on the research report commissioned written by MSDS Heritage entitled ‘Apprenticeships in the historic environment sector: Examining employer interest and barriers to implementation’.

Please sign up to attend the webinar!

Overall, what do you think is most crucial for ensuring a resilient heritage sector?

For me, it is a need to work collaboratively and stop working in “silos”. In establishing the Skills Forum we identified that the strategic challenges affecting skills were effectively the same, whether you were an archaeological scientist or a bricklayer – so why wouldn’t we pool our resources and look at how we can tackle those challenges together?

This Sector Resilience interview was shared by Phil Pollard as part of our Heritage Sector Resilience Plan activities.

If you’d like to contribute an interview as part of the series, follow the link below to find out more:

Sector Resilience Interviews – Historic Environment Forum

Skills Resilience: an Interview with Liam Smyth, Project Implementation Manager at the UK National Commission for UNESCO

As part of the Skills theme of our Sector Resilience Interview series, we heard from Liam Smyth, Project Implementation Manager for the UK National Commission for UNESCO’s Local to Global Project. Local to Global aims to create a resilient community of practice across UK UNESCO designated sites, promoting skills, confidence and capacity-building in three key areas.
Read on to find out more.
Liam, tell us a bit about yourself and your role in the heritage sector.

My name is Liam Smyth and I am the project implementation manager in charge of the ‘Local to Global’ project at the UK National Commission for UNESCO.

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, is a specialised agency of the United Nations with the mandate to use culture, education, science, communication and information to promote mutual dialogue between countries and peoples and foster peace.

The UK National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC) was founded in 1947 and is a constitutional part of the UK Government’s membership of UNESCO. It is grant-funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office to provide independent policy advice, support our network of UNESCO sites and projects across the UK, as well as UNESCO’s global mission.

What can you tell us about the Local to Global project? What does it aim to achieve for skills and capacity in the heritage sector?

Local to Global is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players, and is about building a more resilient network of UNESCO sites in the UK. Uniquely, this is a multi-designation, multi-level approach that covers all of our Biosphere Reserves, Global Geoparks and World Heritage Sites. The UK’s UNESCO sites are destinations of world-class natural and cultural heritage that bring people, communities, businesses and organisations together to mobilise solutions locally, regionally and internationally.

Our previous research on ‘Sites for sustainable development’ and ‘National value of UNESCO to the UK’ successfully demonstrated that all UNESCO designations localise global challenges and address them through collaborative and equitable governance arrangements. Local to Global steps up this learning to define and contribute to best practice in inclusive and participatory approaches that can be shared across our network. 

The project focuses on three key pillars that are relevant across all types of UNESCO designation in the UK:

  1. Audience Development, Stakeholder Mapping and Inclusion
  2. Fundraising and Financial Sustainability
  3. Digital Transformation

Local to Global has commissioned experts in these fields to develop open source resources that draw on case studies from the UK UNESCO network.

 What contribution will this make towards the resilience of the heritage sector?
  • Best practice: the resources developed as a result of this project will support our network and the heritage sector at large to share and benefit from learning and innovations that address a range of intersectoral and systemic challenges.

  • Greater awareness: of the breadth of world-class UNESCO sites in the UK and the people and partners they convene to generate social, natural, economic, and cultural capital.

  • Bridging the research-practice divide: we invite leading academics to present their research to our sites and inspire discussion about how new ideas can be implemented on the ground. Recent online workshops we’ve run have focused on “Women and girl’s safety in parks and public spaces”, “Sustainable tourism” and “The role of visitor centres in UNESCO sites”.

  • Global advocacy: UKNC advocates on behalf of the UK on the world stage, presenting our rich and diverse heritage sector to national commissions worldwide. The Local to Global project has recently featured in presentations at the UNESCO HQ in Paris, the 45th World Heritage Committee in Riyadh and to the Norwegian UNESCO network.
What does success look like for the Local to Global project – how do you plan to measure this?

We want Local to Global to support a sustainable, inclusive and dynamic network, by being responsive to the present and future needs of our sites and their stakeholders. Through iterative evaluation cycles, we are involving all of our sites in co-defining challenges and working collaboratively to prototype and test solutions. Success for Local to Global will be measured by how well we engage and integrate our full network of sites in this process.

An early success of Local to Global was the creation of a brand new illustrated map, which, for the first time, showcases all 58 land-based UNESCO designations in the British Isles and encourages more people to discover them:

https://unesco.org.uk/our-sites

The map was co-created and co-promoted with all sites, which demonstrates the power of a network in driving groundswell and engagement with UNESCO values. During the map launch campaign, in summer 2023, average daily visitors to the UKNC website rocketed by 600% compared to the four weeks prior and social media posts had over 2,000,000 impressions worldwide.

By the end of October 2024, the Local to Global project will have delivered a new website for UKNC that will host a series of toolkits and resources that will support ongoing network-building activities and resilience pathways for UNESCO sites.

Image (c) UK National Commission for UNESCO, with original illustration by Tom Woolley.

An illustrated map of the British isles in pastel colours with the logo of the UK National Commission for UNESCO in the top left hand corner. The map shows each of the 29 World Heritage Sites, 13 Creative Cities, 9 Global Geoparks and 7 Biosphere Reserves in the UK and crown dependencies, represented by a round designation icon and an individual illustration of a significant heritage landmark from the built or natural environment. Two squares on either side of the map show a close-up of London and Edinburgh where there is a higher concentration of UNESCO sites.
Where can we find out more?

We regularly update our project page with blogs and opportunities to get involved: unesco.org.uk/local-to-global

If you have an interest in a key aspect of the project then you can email the project implementation manager, Liam Smyth: lsmyth@unesco.org.uk

Overall, what do you think is most crucial for ensuring a resilient heritage sector?

The sustainable development challenges faced by the heritage sector in the 21st Century are complex and interwoven. It is impossible to address these challenges in silo, so what is most crucial in ensuring a resilient heritage sector are stronger and more inclusive ‘partnerships’ (see: Sustainable Development Goal 17). 

Further, UKNC recognises that beyond ‘resilience’, the heritage sector must also be prepared to ‘adapt’ to changes and realise new opportunities together.

This Sector Resilience interview was shared by Liam Smyth as part of our Heritage Sector Resilience Plan activities. 

If you’d like to contribute an interview as part of the series, follow the link below to find out more:

Sector Resilience Interviews – Historic Environment Forum

HEF Policy Priorities Statement

In autumn 2023, HEF agreed a statement of  the Forum’s common-ground support for key future policy measures relating to the historic environment. The content of this statement reflects collaborative discussion by members at this year’s HEF Foresight Day. The key asks of the statement are:

– Enable the historic environment to deliver the best possible outcomes for the public by building resilience in places, organisations, and structures.

– Enhance the historic environment’s contribution to reaching Net Zero goals through the implementation of a National Retrofit Strategy.

– Maximise environmental benefits by ensuring the natural and historic elements of our landscapes are considered and managed holistically.

The full statement is available here.


Skills Resilience: an Interview with Isabel McKernan, Heritage Project Manager at CITB Northern Ireland

As part of the Skills theme of our Sector Resilience Interview series, we heard from Isabel McKernan, Heritage Project Manager at the Construction Industry Training Board for Northern Ireland (CITB NI). In 2022, the CITB NI embarked on a new three-year project to invest in traditional heritage skills training and re-establish trades in danger of being lost.
Read on to find out more.
Isabel, tell us a bit about yourself and your role in the heritage sector.

My name is Isabel McKernan, I am Heritage Project Manager at the Construction Industry Training Board for Northern Ireland (CITB NI).

CITB NI’s role is to encourage the adequate training of those employed or intending to be employed in the construction industry, to improve skills and productivity and deliver a safe, professional and fully qualified workforce across the whole of the construction industry in Northern Ireland. 

CITB NI has been actively involved in promoting training opportunities in traditional building skills, working with key stakeholders since 2009. In September 2022, CITB NI commenced a 3-year heritage project to further heritage skills training, supported by Covid Recovery Programme which is funded by the Department for Communities and administered by the Heritage Fund in Northern Ireland.

What can you share with us about the CITB NI’s Heritage Project? What does it aim to achieve for skills and capacity in the heritage sector?

The project builds on previous research undertaken by CITB NI, which found that Northern Ireland has an increasing number of pre-1919 buildings requiring maintenance and repair, increasing the need for traditional skills. This research also identified skills shortages, with stonemasons, heritage joiners, blacksmiths and thatchers particularly needed in Northern Ireland.

Unfortunately, there are limited pathways for learners to undertake accredited vocational heritage training in Northern Ireland, and there are barriers to some craftspeople taking on an apprentice on an informal basis. This has resulted in an ageing workforce, with many heritage craftspeople due to retire in the next five years, which will exacerbate existing shortages and have a real effect on retention and condition of historic buildings.

The project aims to raise awareness and knowledge of traditional skills and materials through providing training and upskilling opportunities and engagement with schools to promote careers in heritage construction.

However, the overarching aim of the project is to test the viability of long-term training provision in heritage skills outside of funded projects in order to increase consistent opportunities for people to train in traditional building skills. If successful, this should increase capacity in the heritage sector through actively providing accredited training and upskilling opportunities, supporting a high-quality skills output, and encouraging new entrants in areas of high need.

Images (c) CITB NI

 What contribution will this make towards the resilience of the heritage sector?

The project works closely with a number of different heritage and stakeholder organisations, strengthening relationships and working towards the shared aim of improving access to heritage skills and training. The sector will be more resilient, both through increased opportunities for collaboration, and also through increasing capacity and skills within the workforce, which will help to protect and maintain our historic environment into the future.

What does success look like for the Heritage Project? How do you plan to measure this?

By the end of the project in summer 2025, the aim is to increase the pool of skilled craftspeople, which will allow for the enhancement of heritage places and spaces and begin to re-establish heritage trades and skills currently in danger of being lost.

Success of the project is measured through the amount of people who benefit from training, the number of new entrants to the heritage sector through the project, and the legacy of the project through the ability to continue training into the future.

Where can we find out more?

To find out more about the project and to attend heritage training events, you can visit https://www.citbni.org.uk/Heritage-Project.aspx, or email heritage@citbni.org.uk.

You can also follow the project on Twitter @TradSkillsNI, and follow CITB NI on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Overall, what do you think is most crucial for ensuring a resilient heritage sector?

Working together and supporting the organisations and craftspeople that are sharing skills, and those which have shared interests and goals. Sharing knowledge and promoting opportunities for people to get involved in the sector is also really important.

This Sector Resilience interview was shared by Isabel McKernan as part of our Heritage Sector Resilience Plan activities. 

If you’d like to contribute an interview as part of the series, follow the link below to find out more:

Sector Resilience Interviews – Historic Environment Forum

Join the HEF team! We are recruiting

Historic Environment Forum Manager

Are you passionate about the heritage sector? Do you want to facilitate the future of collaboration across important issues facing the sector?

The Historic Environment Forum (HEF) is seeking an outstanding person to manage the Forum and its Steering Group. HEF is a Historic England-funded project delivered on behalf of the wider sector by the Heritage Alliance, the heritage sector’s umbrella organisation and advocacy body.

Location: central London/ homeworking
Salary: £36,000 FTE (Pro-rata 4 days per week; initial fixed term contract to the end of March 2025)

To apply: Please submit the completed application form with a covering letter outlining your reasons for applying for the post to Dr Mike Heyworth, HEF Team Leader, at heftask1@historicenvironmentforum.org.uk.

Closing date: 12 noon, 8 December 2023
You can view the Full Job Description here.

For an informal chat about the post prior to applying, please do contact Dr Mike Heyworth on heftask1@historicenvironmentforum.org.uk.

HEF News Archive
HEF News Archive

Bringing together senior members of staff from public and non-government bodies to work collaboratively on strategic matters for the historic environment sector.

 

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