Latest grants news 
Coppicer Ruth is featured on Radio 4Grants
As well as offering a wide-ranging programme of land-based learning for children and young people, the Ernest Cook Trust gives grants to registered charities, schools and not-for-profit organisations wishing to encourage young people’s interest either in the countryside and the environment or the arts (in the broadest sense) or aiming to raise levels of literacy and numeracy.
Since the ECT is a land-based Trust, work which encourages or ensures the continuation of rural skills and crafts is of particular interest to the Trustees. All applications are expected to link in with either the National Curriculum or with recognised qualifications.
In 2008/09, the ECT Trustees gave £1.7m to support over 450 educational projects. Click here to download a list showing a selection of recent grant recipients.
A large grants programme for awards of over £4,000 and a small grants programme for awards of under £4,000 operate throughout the year.
Grants news
by ECT's Grants Administrator Jose Phillips
So far this year, the Trust has allocated over £1.3 million in grants. And there is a noticeable trend towards supporting apprenticeships in rural and heritage skills, ranging from horse logging and coppicing, to farming and furniture making.
ECT has been a keen supporter of the National Coppice Apprenticeship scheme, giving £10,000 a year to the scheme for the past two years. The Trust has now donated a further £10,000 to the Small Woods Association, to fund a bursary for a coppicing apprentice.
A grant of £10,000 has also been awarded to Canterbury Cathedral towards the cost of training an apprentice stonemason. The cathedral employs four masonry apprentices, all of whom attend the Building Crafts College in Stratford, London - it currently costs on average £25,000 a year to train an apprentice mason to NVQ Level 3.
The Edward Barnsley Educational Trust, in Froxfield, Hampshire, teaches traditional craft skills to aspiring furniture makers. Apprentices are trained in a carefully-planned syllabus, gaining all the necessary skills to become the craftsmen of the future. ECT’s Trustees have donated £10,000 towards the £65,000 total costs of their 2010/11 apprentice year. 
Another traditional skill supported by the Trust is horse logging. Following the success of two apprentices, one of whom has been appointed as horseman at Highgrove, the British Horse Loggers Charitable Trust now wants to offer another apprenticeship, where trainees work four days a week with an experienced horse logger for three years. ECT has given a grant of £6,500 a year to fund apprenticeships over three years.
A £9,000 grant has been awarded over three years to the University of York to fund vernacular building conservation skills apprenticeships. The National Heritage Training Academy (Yorkshire & the Humber), which includes the Archaeology Department at York University, has identified growing shortages of skills in earthwork and vernacular building conservation in the region.
And the Soil Association has been awarded a £10,000 ECT grant to help it found agricultural apprenticeships. The association has found that farmers and growers are unable to recruit people with the necessary skills, and that young people are seeking a route into agriculture with hands-on farm-based experience. This apprenticeship scheme will be piloted with six apprentices in year one, with a further 12 starting the next year.
Ruth’s rural skills feature on Radio 4 
Coppicer Ruth Goodfellow, whose apprenticeship was funded by the Ernest Cook Trust, has appeared on national radio.
Ruth, from Stroud, featured in an engaging item on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, where she talked about her work at Westonbirt Arboretum (Click here to listen – Ruth’s item is 25 minutes into the programme).
She has also featured in the Gloucester Citizen and Stroud Life, after her story was publicised by the Trust to highlight our support for traditional rural skills.
Coppicing is a traditional and sustainable form of woodland management, dating back thousands of years.
After going into decline in recent decades, these skills are now making a comeback as coppicing is increasingly recognised as a sustainable and environmentally-friendly way of managing woodlands.
In coppiced woodlands, trees are cut at ground level, which causes many straight rods to grow from the stump. These are harvested every few years and can be used for a range of products, from rustic furniture to walking sticks.
Since 2007 the Trust has awarded £34,000 in grants to support coppicing apprenticeship schemes nationally.
One of the recipients is the Bill Hogarth Memorial Apprenticeship Trust (BHMAT), which uses the funding to award bursaries to apprentices. Under its three-year validated course, apprentices learn the traditional skills from an experienced coppicer.
So far the scheme has cultivated eight new businesses, as apprentices have completed their training and become self-employed. Some are now planning to take on trainees of their own.
Nicholas Ford, the Ernest Cook Trust’s director, said: “We are delighted to be able to support these apprenticeships. Now more than ever, it is vital that these ancient skills are kept alive – they are part of our rural heritage and they must be preserved.”
Ruth Goodfellow graduated in 2010 after training under the BHMAT apprenticeship scheme.
She is now self-employed and is based at the National Arboretum at Westonbirt, Gloucestershire, where she is involved in a major project to restore 363 acres of ancient coppice woodland. She also co-runs training courses in coppicing for women.
Ruth, who studied philosophy and French at university, turned to a career in coppicing because she longed to work in the great outdoors.
“The apprenticeship was both rewarding and challenging,” she said. “It’s very demanding physically and it’s been a privilege to defy the stereotypes about women in this area. It’s been very pleasing to watch my confidence and strength grow. I love working outdoors in all sorts of conditions and in all seasons.
“It’s very satisfying working with your hands, learning about what amazing things wood and woodlands are, and it’s particularly good to know that you are helping to preserve traditional rural crafts.”