The King welcomed the likes of former England football captain David Beckham and Oscar winners Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep to St James’ Palace today
The King has been heralded as a “pioneer and a visionary” in his crusade to protect traditional crafts and the environment at an awards ceremony for his foundation. The monarch assembled an A-list cast of supporters to celebrate those at the forefront of sustainability, traditional heritage crafts and environmental education throughout the UK.
The King welcomed former England football captain, David Beckham, soon to be knighted as part of the King’s birthday honours, as well as other ambassadors and friends of his foundation including Oscar winners Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep alongside model and presenter Penny Lancaster and French TV chef Raymond Blanc.
Former Manchester United and England superstar Beckham, who became an ambassador for the foundation last year, bowed his head and greeted the King with “Your Majesty” as the monarch made his way down a line of supporters before the event at St James’s Palace today.
Charles, 76, stopped to talk to model Lancaster, married to rock star Rod Stewart, who told the King she had been keeping bees on their Scottish estate.
Winslet, described by royal aides as “a friend of the foundation” was overheard telling the King “don’t worry, I’ve got your back”. Royal sources suggested the British actor may bolster her role as a supporter of the charity in the future.
As Royal Founding President of the charity, The King was on hand to celebrate the foundation’s 35th anniversary at the event as well as recognising the incredible talent and work of the charity’s students, graduates and partners across sustainability, traditional heritage crafts and environmental education.
He met the winners to congratulate them on their awards after competing for the prize in eight individual categories alongside hundreds of other entrants. Other celebrity supporters at the event included tv presenters Sarah Beeny, Alan Titchmarsh and Stanley Tucci.
The foundation today revealed it has to date trained more than 115,000 students in traditional crafts and environmental education over its 35-year tenure, welcomed more than 2.5million visitors to its UK destinations, and positively affected more than 500,000 lives through sustainable urban planning.
King’s Foundation ambassador Penny Lancaster praised the monarch for his vision for creating the awards and highlighting the needs of the planet throughout his adult life.
She said: “We all know that the King has been the forefront and sort of marching us all along for more than 50 years, he’s been an absolute pioneer and visionary in that sense.
“These awards and indeed the foundation is so important because of the role they have in not only protecting these traditional crafts and the environment but also giving the winners such an incredible platform to go and achieve great things. “The King may have been accused of hugging trees and people thinking he was mad when he started talking about the environment all that time ago, but he was at the forefront then and now has been proved right with everything he said and now we’re all just trying to play catch up.
“I really recognise the beauty in the way he is trying to get us on board with his knowledge and if we can pass that on to the younger generation, and save some of the traditional skills like we’ve seen with these winners today, we can all be a part of making a difference.
“I think the mistake is when we say, well, there’s such a huge job ahead of us that we could give up, but where’s the hope about and confidence that we can pull together to not make it such a mammoth task, there is real hope for the future.”
The Emerging Talent award, presented to an individual who has shown exceptional talent and commitment while on a King’s Foundation programme, went to Emily Hurst.
Emily has recently completed the CHANEL and King’s Foundation Métiers d’Art Fellowship in Millinery, based at Highgrove Gardens. In her final year of university, she independently learned the heritage craft of straw braiding to produce historically accurate hats, a skill that has since become central to her practice.
“In my final year at university, I discovered the craft of straw making and fell in love with it. I found out it was an endangered craft and then my tutors put me in touch with the King’s foundation.
“Working at Highgrove was absolutely the best place to be, surrounded by so much inspiration from His Majesty’s garden andlearning from some of the best milliners with country, I’m so incredibly honoured.”
Winner of the Young Entrepreneur award went to Barnaby Horn for developing his own business after honing his traditional milliner skills also on the CHANEL and King’s Foundation Métiers d’Art Fellowship in Millinery, based at Highgrove Gardens.
Known for his exploration of gender through playing with familiar shapes and historic cultural references, in 2023 he launched his namesake label ‘Barnaby Horn’. Judges said Barnaby “has an experimental approach to millinery and is dedicated to developing a mastery in the traditions of the craft”.
He said: “After having lots of different jobs after university, including being a writer and working as a drag queen, I eventually went to the Royal College of Art to study millinery as a master’s.
“I realised that hats had potential to be artefacts of storytelling and I also wanted to be able to make work that was sculptural and tell stories while I was physically not in the room.
“There’s a lot of my work that is poetry, performance or something that involves dance, so I wanted to create work that could embody characters, and obviously the head is such a sensitive place, like a location of dreams and the continuation of storytelling that I love.”
The King’s Foundation is a charity founded by King Charles III and was first formed in 1990. His Majesty is Royal Founding President of the charity.
Inspired by the vision and values of His Majesty, the Foundation builds and supports communities where people, places and the planet can coexist in harmony.
The charity offers education courses for almost 15,000 students annually, health and wellbeing programmes for nearly 2,000 people every year, and spearheads placemaking and regeneration projects in the UK and overseas to revitalise communities and historic buildings.
The King’s Foundation is headquartered at its flagship regeneration project, Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland, and acts as custodian of other historic Royal sites including the Castle of Mey in Caithness, Scotland, and Highgrove Gardens in Gloucestershire.
The Foundation also carries out its work at educational and cultural hubs in London, based at The King’s Foundation School for Traditional Arts in Shoreditch, Trinity Buoy Wharf on the River Thames and the Garrison Chapel in Chelsea. In addition to its UK presence, the Foundation delivers programmes and projects in over a dozen sites worldwide.