Mad’in Europe and Future for Religious Heritage (FRH) have published a comprehensive study examining the state of craft skills in the conservation of built heritage across Europe. The report explores critical issues such as the education and certification of craftspeople, the professional challenges they face, and the transmission of these essential skills to younger generations.
The survey targeted three main groups: crafts professionals working within the built heritage context, professionals like architects, curators, conservation surveyors and engineers, owners of heritage buildings and educational institutions offering craft training.
The findings reveal an ageing workforce and a lack of clear strategies for passing down knowledge and workshops to new artisans and disparities in certification systems across Europe. Additionally, insufficient support for improving marketing capacities and digital skills training, as well as limited pathways for young people to enter the craft sector, further complicate the situation.
This report offers a thorough analysis of these challenges and proposes solutions to safeguard Europe’s traditional craft skills, essential for preserving cultural heritage.
The key study findings were presented on September 20th in a video conference, as part of the Creative Skills Week 2024, where experts from the sector such as Georgia Cristea, Panos Kostoulas, Rodolphe de Looz-Corswarem and Dominic Taylor were invited to share their points of view.
If you missed the conference, you can still watch it here:
Speakers
Dominic Taylor is an experienced craftsman from the UK, who is currently based in Greece. He has extensive experience on various crafts training programs around Europe and beyond. He has been working with Boulouki as an external expert for the last 2 years.
Panos Kostoulas is an architect. He has graduated from University of Patras and completed his post-graduate studies in Materials Science and Technology at the NTUA, focusing on historic mortars. Since 2012, he has worked as an architect, both as an employee and associate with architectural firms in India and Greece. He is a founding member of Boulouki, where he contributes in research, design of educational programmes and project management.
Rodolphe de Looz-Corswarem was born in 1944 in a family historic house in Belgium.He studied economics at Cambridge and has an MBA in HEC Paris. He had a business career as CEO mainly for the Nestlé and Kiss multinational world leaders companies in subsidiaries in 3 continents and 7 countries. He was also for 15 years the CEO of the Brewers of Europe Association and the Executive president for 8 years of the European Historic Houses ass; he is actually member of the Board and the executive committee of that organisation. He is at present time the president or Board member of different European business, cultural or charity organisations. He is often commuting from Brussels in a rural area where he has some great difficulties to find crafted talented artisans.
Georgia Cristea is a graduate of the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism Ion Mincu, Bucharest, where she received a MArch (Hons) in Architecture, followed by a MSc in Sustainable Heritage at The Bartlett / UCL, London. She is an accredited Conservation RIBA Chartered Architect (CA), a Guardian of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and stands as an advisor in the INTBAU Communication Committee and as the Education and Projects Manager of INTBAU Romania. Georgia runs her own practice, specialising in conservation architecture and interior design in Listed or in Conservation Area Buildings. She also acts as the Events Coordinator of the TAG, Traditional Architecture Group, host to INTBAU UK, where she organises the TAG Talks, monthly online lectures promoting outstanding Traditional Architecture and New Urban Design projects, hands-on workshops and other educational activities for the members.