Training Centre
Training in artistic crafts and conservation of heritage
The Artistic Crafts Training Centre – homologated by Madrid’s regional employment services (homologation no 27.174) – is an initiative of El Barco®, a company long engaged with culture: over 25 years of restorative actions and projects, reproductions of works of art and decoration works.
We offer our expertise to all those who feel that their vocation is linked to the artistic crafts and they want to carry out this activity with specialized professional know-how inside an entrepreneurial organisation with a long professional history and always on-site.
Our premises are adequately furnished and equipped to house different artistic workshops, providing the required facilities for the right performance of the artistic work.
The Artistic Crafts Training Centre is oriented towards:
- Construction
- Decoration
- Restoration of cultural assets
The training courses will focus on the craft technique as well as on the theoretical and practical knowledge concerning materials, artistic techniques and decoration styles. We emphasize the relevance of each one of these in the whole of a decoration project as well as the importance of teamwork. To this effect the course includes a project, dealing with decoration elements and different crafts, where everyone contributes with his/her own work to achieve a final result.
The theoretical elements and its practical implementation aim at the insertion into the labour market. Therefore, we provide our pupils with the necessary knowledge for them to join any entrepreneurial organization as well as to offer their work for projects demanding highly specialized taskforce, either in new construction works or in artistic reproductions.
Professional groups like architects, decorators, builders as well as the public administration will profit from the opportunity to provide their projects with highly qualified taskforce that will guarantee a professional execution of their work. At the same time, we are recovering the traditional crafts, so much linked to our culture. Without the support from the extraordinary craftspeople who carried out the projects of the architect Antonio Gaudi it would not be possible today to admire those buildings, plentiful of art. None of the great decoration projects of the 19th century would have been possible, either.
Our training project deals with artistic crafts applied to the restoration of cultural assets. The Council of Europe, as reflected on the Amsterdam Declaration (1975), express the need to train craftsmen for the restoration and preservation of the architectonic heritage.
El Barco®‘s main concern in the last 25 years has been restoring and preserving cultural assets,
enriching our staff with experts in different artistic crafts who have participated in more than 300
restoration works of undoubtedly high artistic and cultural relevance. It is our desire to transmit this
practical knowledge both in our regular courses and intensive monographic sessions. Our rigorous
tuition follows the criteria and the philosophy of restoration combined with our practical knowledge
of the artistic crafts.
The courses will have a common part (documentation, analysis, criteria, pathologies, techniques,
study of materials and decorating styles) and a specific one for each of the practical specialities:
wood, plaster, lime, iron, paint, glass, textile, paper, stone, leather, etc.
The courses are specially addressed to people with a certain degree of craftsmanship willing to apply their knowledge to the conservation and restoration of the architectonic heritage. The courses usually last 3 months, during which theoretical issues will be taught, aiming to provide each specific craft with the necessary resources according to the philosophy and criteria of restoration. Pupils may, in specific cases, support the senior restorer as assistants.
The 15-day monographic courses will complete the formation on specific areas and will be designed according to the needs and to the demand.
Our commitment with the preservation of our cultural heritage is equally extensive to the Latin American countries because they share our culture and have the same needs. Training in different crafts must be understood as a sign of identity and a meeting point between the different countries forming the Latin American culture in order to guarantee the preservation of our cultural heritage and our artistic crafts.
