Soft Launch of SCT Skills Craft Training Workshop with Lyford Cay Foundation Students from Bahamas –programme delivered by The King’s Foundation

On 18–19 August 2025, the Sustainable Conservation Trust (SCT) proudly welcomed a group of students from the Bahamas as part of the Lyford Cay Foundation’s $2 million endowed scholarship program with The King’s Foundation, which focuses on training in building crafts.

This landmark visit also marked the soft launch of our new SCT Skills Craft Training Workshop at the Old Pay Office in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard — a dedicated hub for hands-on learning, green skills, and international collaboration in heritage crafts.

Over two days, eight scholarship students and two programme managers took part in a classroom-based introduction to heritage skills at the new workshop before touring local fortification sites where SCT and Deniz Beck Partners https://www.denizbeck.com/ have delivered projects. The sessions explored not only core craft techniques — limework, masonry, timber repair — but also the use of natural materials, the development of low-carbon green skills, adaptive reuse good practices and SCT’s ongoing work in art-based research, which uses creativity to unlock new ways of engaging with historic places.

The programme reflects SCT’s mission:

• Heritage with Purpose — connecting historic places with sustainable futures.

• Community Co-Creation — welcoming international students and local partners into our spaces to learn and contribute.

• Learning Through Doing — embedding hands-on craft training and research within real heritage environments.

This soft launch builds on SCT’s wider work — from hosting the Don’t Waste Buildings roundtable in Portsmouth to co-creating residencies, training programmes, and research projects with artists, students, and communities. The new Skills Craft Training Workshop will now serve as a central platform for skills exchange, natural material innovation, and creative conservation practice, community empowerment with further programmes to be announced later this year.

We are grateful to The King’s Foundation for choosing SCT as a partner in this important initiative, and we look forward to developing the workshop into a regional and international hub for heritage craft training, green skills, and cultural research.