Local heritage groups, museum staff and volunteers across the Highland and Islands will be receiving news this week of the Autumn/Winter programme of free training from “Skills Building for the Future”. The “Training News” newsletter was posted at the end of September to everyone from Lerwick to Dunoon, and Stornoway to Findhorn. Copies are also available in libraries across the area.
'Skills Building for the Future' free training courses have been specially designed to meet the needs of museums and voluntary heritage groups. Over 90 courses will be running across the Highland and Islands between October 2006 and May 2007, covering a range of useful topics ranging from practical skills such as conservation and research to legislative and management issues. 12 courses are currently planned for the Western Isles, including courses in managing archives, documentation for accreditation, conservation, copyright and interpretation.
All 'Skills Building' training is completely free, and travel/subsistence costs for participants from heritage organisations are also covered. The project partners are the six local authorities in the area and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, with support from the Scottish Executive’s Regional Development Challenge Fund.
Steve Callaghan, 'Skills Building for the Future' steering group leader, said: “We have had excellent feedback on the first year of the training programme, with 99.5% of participants rating the training courses as very useful or quite useful. We hope that this new programme has even more to offer, with a higher number of courses covering a greater range of topics. Our aim is to provide genuinely useful courses that will help those involved in heritage and museums to build capacity within their organisations.
“Enquiries are also welcome from the wider voluntary sector or from private heritage operations who may find some of the courses on offer useful to their activities. (Different rules re charges will apply in these cases, but the courses will still represent extremely good value)”.
To receive your copy of “Training News” by e-mail or post, please contact Gayle or Hazel at Rowan Tree Consulting on tel 01463 715225. You can also find full details of all the courses and book online on the project website www.heritage-skills.co.uk.
