The academy in Lyme Regis helping more women get into the craft of building boats
Watch Ben McGrail's report
A boat building charity in Lyme Regis is leading the way in getting more women into the craft of boat building.
It’s an industry historically dominated by men, but by offering short courses and bursaries for women, the Boat Building Academy is having great success in encouraging more female representation.
Marie Franklin has had a dramatic change in her career. She was a solicitor, focusing on prison reform and representing children in prison. Now she’s helping to build a boat in Lyme Regis.
“When I was thinking of what to do next I thought I don’t want to be on computers, I don’t want to have huge things at stake which are about people’s lives, so what could it be?", she said.
"I started looking around and looked at courses on boat building. I came here and it was such a welcoming environment and pretty magical what goes on.”
Marie is on a 40-week course at the Boat Building Academy, which is leading the way nationally in getting more women into the industry.
Honey Harman is also on the course, and said: “I really love how technically challenging it can be. It’s a really broad spectrum of things you can do from day to day.
"I absolutely thrive in environments where you can shift from job to job and there’s a lot of room for flexibility here and I think generally in the boat building world whatever you want to do, you can move along at a really nice pace, whether you are doing restorations or building from scratch like we are here, it’s new and it’s exciting every day.”
After three courses in a row with no women, the academy realised it needed to do something and now offers bursaries for women as well as short courses to introduce them to the craft.
Will Reed from the Boat Building Academy said: “We’ve had so many brilliant women through here over the years that for us we want to make it more accessible, to bring more women here and to make the world of boat building realise that women are a great contribution to the workforce so if employers realise they could double their potential workforce by being more inclusive of women and that would be a great thing.”