Tamara Cincik attends Highgrove House to celebrate British craft and heritage
Images showsHis Majesty the King meeting attendees of the Highgrove House event.
On Friday I was invited to the King's Foundation Celebrating Craft at Highgrove House in Tetbury, for a Christmas event in the presence of His Majesty the King. The King's Foundation is a charity launched by the King as a vehicle to train the next generation of skilled craftspeople – including in fashion and textiles – in heritage techniques valuable to many traditional UK industries.
Highgrove, alongside Dumfries House, is where the King's Foundation host their residential training courses in craft and creative practice. In terms of fashion they partner with Chanel on an intensive 6 month residential course based primarily at Highgrove for post graduates, currently specialising in embroidery. In an era when AI and digitisation is forecast to eat up so many job opportunities, it is clear to me that critical creative thinking and highly skilled craft based work will be more covetable and long lasting. Therefore by focusing on hand made craft specialist skills, the work of the King's Foundation is shining a light on the role of specialism in career development and valuing heritage craft skills for not only the beauty they create, but also the job opportunities they offer.
In their words:
"This specialist postgraduate-level programme will provide students with intensive training opportunities in the field of Embroidery for Haute Couture and the Luxury Fashion Industry – essential for successful progression into the industry. The Fellowship takes place at The CHANEL Métiers d’art Training Atelier at Highgrove, and over two separate weeks at Le19M in Paris. Teaching is delivered by artisans and highly skilled tutors, with mentorship and guidance by Creative Directors from Maisons d’art such as Lesage, Atelier Montex and Lemarié. Throughout the programme there are opportunities for students to expand their creative process and presentation skills through contextual studies, lectures, presentations and critiques. Only six students are selected each year and awarded bursaries to help towards the cost of living. This practice-based learning encourages creativity, builds skill-confidence and prepares recent graduates to become artisan embroiderers of the future."
After seeing the training centre and meeting students across embroidery, where Bath Spa alumna Jamila Ives is Curriculum Coordinator for Textiles, and showed me the most beautiful pieces of work by their embroidery students, I saw blacksmithing, and where the carpentry students train at the Showdon School of Design. These carpenters were creating the most beautifully redesigned Windsor chairs as one of their projects, and again showed an exemplary level of design acumen and critical creative thinking.
Walking past carol singers, I was then ushered into a room to meet with HM the King where alongside guests, there were other projects supported by the King's Foundation on show, such as knitting and a fantastic upcycling initiative where curtains from Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace have been upcycled by students of The King’s Foundation into seven one-off fashion pieces that are currently being auctioned online, alongside other collectibles and unique experiences to raise money for the charity. Each garment took 8 - 10 hours and was tailored by hand at their Dumfries House headquarters. To find out more, or to place a bid before the auction closes at 23:59 on Wednesday 13 December 2023, visit https://tinyurl.com/KFAuction2023
The King was very interested in the work we do at Fashion Roundtable in promoting fibre sovereignty, heritage skills and regenerative practice. Not only was it obviously an honour to meet him and to share the work I do, it was also fantastic to meet like minded people with expertise across design, craft and creativity, all with a shared belief in valuing our heritage and supporting the educational opportunities for future generations.