His Majesty The King staged a visit to Dumfries House in Ayrshire last week to follow up with a group of students from Antigua as part of The King's Foundation.
Andy and Nicki Thorne also went to catch up with this group of talented students from Antigua , who were funded by Kestrel to fly to the UK in order to join one of the many programmes on the Dumfries Estate in Scotland thanks to the imagination of His Majesty The King.
His Majesty The King’s support of traditional arts & craft by training young people in skills that have been lost in many communities around the world , His Majesty is enabling not only superbly trained young people to head back to Antigua (& throughout the Caribbean) and practice these new found skills but also bringing them skill sets that are relevant to a region that can suffer from power outage due to a variety of reasons. For example after weather damage in case of serious hurricane.
These students were learning the old ways for example to construct roof trusses, without power tools and without nails or screws. They were also learning the fine art of slicing wooden roof shingles by axe. The mixed group includes those trained in engineering , architecture and as well the construction trades. They were extremely privileged to be visited by His Majesty and were able to show him the projects they were working on.
The Estate has been set up to train people in a multitude of traditional building arts and crafts that are not just beautiful but incredibly relevant to today’s modern world. We got to see examples of finished builds that are created by groups of students at the end of their training. One was a stunning circular bird hide snuggled into the woodland.
Other courses include fashion and textiles , farming and rural skills, fine arts and architecture. All set within the stunning grounds of this 18th century stately home set on 2000 acres. Dumfries House is open to the public year round.
To find out more about supporting The King's Foundation and the many courses on office head over to their websites links below.
