North East: “Dry Stone Walling Project”

Dry Stone Wall completedThis is a project enabling young men from Deerbolt Young Offenders Institute to gain practical experience in a traditional craft skill, Dry Stone Walling. Working with the Northumbria Dry Stone Walling Association, young men were offered the opportunity to have taster workshop sessions in Dry Stone Walling, with a view to enabling up to four young men to progress onto an apprenticeship scheme and formal qualification.

 

Young Offenders Learning Dry-stone Walling Skills. These schemes will involve working outside Deerbolt with a professional dry stone waller in order to gain a better understanding of the trade but also to gain the 50 hours required fieldwork to register to take the LANTRA Level One Dry Stone Walling accredited assessment.  This would provide the individual with a recognised qualification and would allow them to pursue this career as a viable option.

 Dry Stone Wall in progressDry stone walling is a traditional but dying skill, where the numbers of professionals continue to decline.  The need to encourage greater numbers of people to enter the profession was recognised at English Heritage’s 2004 launch of ‘Heritage Counts’ where the severe shortage of professionals in traditional skilled industries so vital to the historic environment was highlighted.  This project therefore seeks to address this imbalance by aiming to introduce a small number of individuals to a career within dry stone walling, but also provides Deerbolt with a new direction for its vocational courses, which do not rely as heavily on numeracy and literacy skills like many other careers.