THE FUTURE IS YOUNG

The Shipshape Heritage Training Partnership (SHTP) created and managed by National Historic Ships UK (NHS-UK), has its origins in 2010 when NHS-UK set up the Shipshape Network to promote regeneration of traditional skills and bring together people engaged in training schemes. As part of that, a survey was carried out to see what traditional skills might be in decline, and around the same time Hannah Cunliffe, then NHS-UK’s policy and project manager before being promoted to director in 2017, was approached by various operators of traditional vessels having difficulty recruiting people with a knowledge of rigs such as gaff, lug and sprit. So NHS-UK set up a working group to consider a training scheme. By good fortune, around the same time the Heritage Lottery Fund launched its Skills for the Future programme, “which was very much about trying to promote and regenerate traditional skills through training across the whole heritage sector,” said Hannah. After a bid from NHS-UK to be part of this proved successful, the first two-year programme – SHTP 1, which set out to develop knowledge and skills for maintaining, conserving and operating historic vessels – began in 2014.

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