March 2008 Heritage Feature: Skills Building Update

“Skills Building for the Future” is the FREE training programme designed specially for staff and volunteers in local museums and heritage societies throughout the Highlands and Islands.   

 “Skills Building” was one of ten new Regional Development Challenge Fund projects announced by the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Museums Council in 2004. The RDCF is funded by the Scottish Government and administered by the Scottish Museums Council. To date the SBFF programme has run over 200 free training events throughout the Highland and Islands covering over 60 different topics.

 Evaluation of the training programme to the end of Year 2 shows that over 354 individuals from 150 different local museums and heritage groups have attended one or more courses – overall, 51% of all groups in the area are participating in the programme. 

 99.5% of participants rated the courses they attended as” very useful” or “quite useful”. 88.5% of participants felt the course content was as they expected, and many others said that that the courses were more useful and interesting than they had expected! 

 The third (and final) year of the programme of training (which started in November 2007) includes popular courses from the previous year’s Programmes, along with a range of newly-developed courses. Visit www.heritage-skills.co.uk for details and to book online. 

 The programme of training events is scheduled to end in late spring 2008, with a series of special regional networking and training days in late April/ May. This will be followed by evaluation of the project. A major conference, looking at the legacy of the project, will be held in September 2008.

 THE PROJECT LIVES ON…….

Although the training programme is coming to an end, staff and volunteers in local museums and heritage societies will still be able to tap into the pool of specialist training provided by the project.

 Heritage North is to host a new Learning Zone. As yet unbranded, it will feature files, lessons and aides memoires on the courses delivered throughout the network, by the tutors who delivered them. The site is due to go live in September 2008.