Hamish is actively seeking to donate significantly more money to health, heritage and music initiatives to help more people from deprived communities in the UK and around the Commonwealth.
Funding and supporting carpentry apprenticeships and traineeships
The UK is facing a chronic heritage skills crisis. Although vocational qualifications are becoming more popular in the UK, there is a large gap between the supply of apprenticeships and the growing demand.
Around 50% of young Britons do not go to university and more than 30% of 18 year olds are not in any form of education. Hamish believes that these people have huge talent to unlock which will not only help to solve the heritage skills crisis across the UK and the Commonwealth, but also boost economic growth and preserve some of the world’s great and treasured heritage sites for the enjoyment of generations to come. In the UK alone, there are nearly 5,000 buildings on the Heritage at Risk Register.
Apprenticeships in the UK are currently underfunded and undersupplied due in part to government budget constraints and high training costs. If young people want an apprenticeship through the government’s scheme to match employers and applicants, there are three times as many candidates as places on offer.
Young people in deprived communities are disproportionately affected by the lack of apprenticeship opportunities currently available. Hamish wants to help fill this gap, and has previously donated money to some of the world’s best-known heritage organisations to create sustainable heritage skills apprenticeship and training programmes which benefit disadvantaged young people by facilitating life-long career opportunities.
Existing programmes already funded by Hamish will create over 3,300 high-quality, fully-funded heritage traineeships and apprenticeships in the UK and around the Commonwealth.
Hamish is the largest single private donor to heritage skills training in the UK and, in 2023 alone, donated £26 million to this cause.
In 2008, Hamish donated £2 million towards the restoration of The Great East Window in York Minster which was the largest private donation in the Minster’s history. The donation enabled the employment of 12 glazier students for three years; they conducted their work in the glaziers’ rooms above the stonemasons’ yard.
In 2020, Hamish donated £375,000 to Richmond's Georgian Theatre Royal refurbishment which provided more comfortable seating and improved views of the stage whilst maintaining the building’s heritage and authenticity. In 2021, Rishi Sunak, former Prime Minister and local MP, spoke at the reopening event saying: “This is a glorious re-awakening of a unique theatre which is not only renowned nationally and internationally but loved locally. It is great to be back here, and I have already booked my family’s tickets for this year’s panto.”
For more information regarding funding opportunities, click here.
£70 million*
30 Countries
Heritage Skills Training
