BUILDING ON EXPERTISE
How the Churches Conservation Trust, in partnership with Oxford experts, is boosting its commercial and trading knowledge to bring about benefits for the heritage sector
Caring for and maintaining a listed building is at the heart of heritage protection and conservation, requiring specialist knowledge, expertise, and funds. The Churches Conservation Trust has developed a wealth of maintenance expertise over 50 years of working with hundreds of historic churches.
The Trust cares for 357 Church of England buildings no longer used for worship. All of the churches in the collection are listed, mostly Grade I and II*, and some are Scheduled Ancient Monuments. They have a particular focus on routine maintenance, which is more effective in the long term than ad hoc interventions. The estate is divided into clusters of 10-20 churches fairly near to each other. Contractors are offered three-year maintenance contracts for each cluster, making it very cost-effective for both the contractor and the Trust.
Could all this expertise in maintenance management be used to strengthen the financial resilience of the Trust? This question has been at the heart of a partnership between the Churches Conservation Trust and the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, one of the leading academic institutions working on organisational change.
Painting Little Stonham Church. Credit: Ian Lambert Freeland Rees Roberts Architects.
Painting Little Stonham Church. Credit: Ian Lambert Freeland Rees Roberts Architects.
"The seed of the project was the need for the Trust to explore opportunities to generate commercial income. One of the options we were considering was expanding our maintenance service to other places of worship or organisations that care for historic estates", says Gabriella Misuriello, Head of Conservation at the Churches Conservation Trust. "For over 50 years, we have been maintaining historic buildings, opening them to the public and engaging with local communities. But we’ve never had either the capacity or the expertise to explore the commercial viability of this type of activity."
Since 2018, the Trust has been providing a small-scale maintenance service to groups of Quakers caring for their historic meeting houses. For an annual fee, the Quakers receive a maintenance visit from an approved contractor during which basic maintenance tasks (such as cleaning gutters, removing weeds or checking the roof) are carried out. They also have access to the Trust’s conservation experts to discuss further work and any areas of concern. This gives the Quaker volunteers peace of mind and improves standards of care for these listed buildings.
The service is a small part of the Trust’s commercial activity, which together accounts for less than 10% of their overall income. But that is where working with Oxford’s experts through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) is helping the Trust to scale up its service and generate more income to use in their charitable work.
As part of the scheme, the KTP Associate Dr Jessica Stitt is employed by Oxford Saïd Business School and embedded in the Trust’s conservation team. Trained in conservation and with a doctorate in management from Oxford Saïd Business School, Dr Stitt had previously worked with the Trust on some short-term projects via the University’s Heritage Network, laying the foundations for this larger and more ambitious partnership. In the past two years as KTP Associate she has been studying the financial operations of the Trust, researching the heritage sector, carrying out market analysis and making profitability assessments. Commenting on Dr Stitt’s work, Ms Misuriello says:
"It has been fascinating to see Oxford’s rigorous research approach applied to interrogating an issue that we have been thinking about for many years. It has allowed us time and insight to reconsider our approach more systematically and challenge any assumptions that we might have had because we are so close to it."
The Trust’s collaboration with the University has involved academics from multiple research disciplines as well as students from all academic areas. By tapping into schemes such as the student consultancy and The Oxford Strategy Challenge (TOSCA), the partnership has paved the way for new interdisciplinary projects such as a project on flood control management with Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment.
The exchange of benefits, then, works both ways: the Trust has better insight into what resources are available to them via the University; and researchers, students and conservationists are better able to diversify their work and opportunities.
"There are many potential areas of collaboration – whether that is research in the ecclesiastical side, buildings and conservation research, or marketing, digital and audience development," says Dr Stitt.
Little Stonham Church. Credit: Ian Lambert Freeland Rees Roberts Architects.
Image shows Dr Harrison Steel working on the OxVent Ventilator project in 2020.
As well as supporting the Churches Conservation Trust, the project has helped the University learn how to consult more efficiently with other heritage organisations and to support them in developing a commercial and entrepreneurial mindset. Dr Pegram Harrison, Academic Supervisor for this partnership, says:
"The partnership is truly a balanced two-way knowledge exchange. Primarily, the project is addressing the challenge faced by the Trust – which is common in the charity sector – to develop modern management and leadership practices and be more responsive to changes in their environment. In this sense, the spirit of the partnership is a management knowledge transfer from the Saïd Business School to the Churches Conservation Trust. However, the knowledge transfer also happens in the reverse: the field of management studies continues to expand its understanding of what it takes to manage and lead a charity, and being able to observe how things work is a learning opportunity for us as the academic partners."
Besides interrogating the feasibility of this commercial venture, the expertise of Oxford's Saïd Business School is also being deployed to support the Trust with strategy development, business planning and more generally to develop a culture that embraces commercial value and innovation.
To this end, Dr Harrison has regular one-to-one meetings with the Trust’s CEO, Greg Pickup; these are opportunities to discuss concerns, report on previous meetings and explore issues facing the heritage sector. There have been further tangible benefits along the way: from all-staff workshops around innovation to a strategy ‘away day’ where Churches Conservation Trust’s senior staff had the opportunity to think differently about their trading operations, generating ideas that will feed into the development of a strategy for the next 5-10 years.
In addition, a day-long academic workshop brought academics and heritage industry stakeholders together recently to develop the outline of a series of publications, both academic and professional, aimed at informing and enabling more opportunities for partnering between universities and the heritage sector.
The altar in Little Stonham Church. Credit: Ian Lambert Freeland Rees Roberts Architects.
The altar in Little Stonham Church. Credit: Ian Lambert Freeland Rees Roberts Architects.
Ultimately, this partnership goes beyond the world of heritage and academia. Most of the buildings cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust are of more than just architectural significance; they are focal points for rural or semi-rural communities. Helping the Trust to work even better can have a positive impact, not only on the two organisations involved, but also on communities all over the country.
Conserving wooden carvings in Little Stonham Church. Credit: Ian Lambert Freeland Rees Roberts Architects.
Conserving wooden carvings in Little Stonham Church. Credit: Ian Lambert Freeland Rees Roberts Architects.
"Enabling a triple helix of benefits – cultural conservation, economic stability and social vitality – is probably the most important outcome of this project because it has a direct positive impact on over 350 communities in England," says Dr Harrison, who had already highlighted the same three responsibilities for museum leaders through previous work. "It’s not just about saving beautiful buildings but also about supporting stable communities and promoting economic balance. To validate previous research in a different context has been very rewarding."
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