Crafts Professional Training Centre
About Us
|
The CRAFTS PROFESSIONAL TRAINING CENTRE (CFOA, in Spanish), is an initiative from El Barco®, a company engaged with the promotion of culture for more than 20 years, carrying out projects and restoration actions, reproductions of works of art and decoration works. We are offering our know-how to all those professionals who feel that their vocation is linked to the artistic crafts and  who wish to carry out these duties with rigour, in the framework of a highly experienced and very active entrepreneurial organisation.Our facilities have been adequately furnished to house different artistic workshops, providing them with means and resources for an optimal practice of the artistic work. The Crafts Professional Training Centre is oriented towards:
The training process will focus on craftsmanship as well as on theoretical and practical knowledge of materials, artistic techniques and decorating styles. We will emphasize how important the individual is in a decorating project, while learning to work in a team. A project will be carried out during the course, consisting of different decorating elements and crafts, where everyone will add up his work in order to obtain a final result. The formation and later putting the acquired knowledge into practice are oriented towards the insertion in the labour market, providing the pupils with the necessary know-how, either to be hired by a private company or to offer their craftsmanship in projects which demand highly qualified workforce, both at new building sites or at works requiring artistic reproductions. Professional groups like architects, decorators, builders as well as the public institutions will have the chance  to provide their projects with highly qualified workers who will show rigour in performing their tasks, recovering the tradition of crafts that has been so tightly linked to our national cultural heritage. Without the support of the magnificent craftsmen who executed the projects of the architect Antonio Gaudi it would not be possible today to admire his buildings, so plentiful of art, neither would the great decorating projects of the 19th century ever be finished.Our training project includes, on the other hand, the artistic crafts applied to the restoration of Cultural Assets. The Council of Europe, as reflected on the Amsterdam Declaration (1975), expresses the need to train craftsmen for the restoration and preservation of the architectonic heritage. El Barco®'s main concern in the last 20 years has been restoring and preserving cultural assets, enriching our staff with experts in different crafts, who have participated in more 300 restoration works of undoubtedly high artistic and cultural relevance. It is our desire to transmit this practical knowledge in our regular courses and intensive monographic sessions, with a rigorous tuition following the criteria and the philosophy of restoration, together 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, according to 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 preservation and restoration of the Architectonic Heritage  . The usual duration of the courses is 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, and in some cases supporting the senior restorer as assistants.The 2-week monographs 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, which share our same 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. |