Sustainability Skills Cluster

Introduction

The project brings together five partners to work collaboratively to establish a Sustainability Skills Cluster for Powys. 

The Cluster will triangulate three of the county’s strengths in order to forge a USP that will be of benefit to employers, learners, and the wider economy. 

NPTC has two centres in the county delivering vocational skills. CAT has a global reputation on sustainability. Cwm Harry and Black Mountains College are pioneering new kinds of community-based training which adapts and adopts existing vocational curricula to widen access to training opportunities in rural communities. 

The project aims to knit these three strengths together to examine the feasibility of forging one portal for sustainable skills in Powys with a range of courses, developed in consultation with business and agriculture with the support of Mid Wales Manufacturing Group and Young Farmers Cymru, and delivered at multiple sites across the county. 

Challenge

We face a triple bottom line problem:

• Socially we lose our younger generation from Powys as there are too few opportunities to keep them here. And too few places to learn relevant skills.
• Environmentally we face a dual emergency of climate change and biodiversity loss, with the impacts both global and local. 
• Economically we need a viable economy, but one based on meeting the environmental challenges and providing greater opportunities. 

Solution

Skills – sustainable skills – is one way of tackling all three issues and this project set out to explore what the need was and how it could be better might through a collaboration of five organisations all involved in skills and / or enterprise development.

Benefit

Through formal research and hands on curriculum development with associated piloting in the fields of construction (retrofit) and land management (regenerative horticulture) we know there is immense need and that we can begin to meet that need.
Along the way a wide range of ancillary benefits, partnerships and initiatives were engaged with, animated, or even initiated, all lending weight to the evidence of need and opportunity.

Result

• Whilst the project suffered from delays and interruptions it did complete its core activities, although as will most projects more time would have helped. 
• As importantly it linked to, animated and at times initiated a wide range of ancillary initiatives in this field, bringing with them substantial added value.
• Whilst the project did not find a way of viably sustaining a longer-term formal Sustainable Skills Cluster within the tight timeframe; the research, findings of the project and the participating partners all agree that the need for sustainable skills remains substantial and the opportunity to collaborate – to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts – is still present. 
• And is probably more pressing than ever as the climate emergency mounts and the need to establish a more resilient economy grows.