For businesses rooted in heritage, the future can present a complex balancing act.

Across Cumbria and beyond, traditional industries are facing shrinking talent pools, rising operational pressures and rapidly evolving technology. For the Holker Group, whose portfolio spans heritage tourism, land stewardship and natural stone manufacturing, those pressures are not theoretical. They are immediate, structural and deeply human.

Holker Estate spans approximately 17,000 acres in South Lakeland. At its heart sits Holker Hall, home of the Cavendish family, alongside a diverse group of businesses operating under the estate umbrella, including heritage tourism, property, land management and commercial enterprises such as Burlington Stone.

While the Group is committed to preserving legacy and creating sustainable opportunity for future generations, it recognises that long-term stewardship depends on adapting to new pressures, skills demands and technologies.

A strengthening partnership

Holker’s engagement with Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) has evolved over decades, with senior leaders attending University events and building familiarity with its business engagement offer. Those touchpoints built trust and an understanding of how academic collaboration could translate into practical business value.

A key milestone came when Burlington Stone’s Rob Cooper completed LUMS Productivity through People leadership programme. The experience strengthened leadership capability, improved collaboration and productivity, and built the confidence and mindset needed for the division to embrace long-term innovation.

When the opportunity arose to join Lancaster University Management School’s AI Digital Catalyst programme, it felt like a natural progression rather than a leap into the unknown.

Understanding before implementing

AI Digital Catalyst supports senior leaders to explore artificial intelligence in a structured, practical way, combining three focused workshops on strategy, application and responsible adoption with the opportunity to develop a live AI project supported by a fourth-year MSci student.

Colin Sneath, Marketing Manager, and Glyn Biggs, IT Manager, joined the programme from different parts of the organisation, bringing complementary priorities.

For Colin, the appeal was strategic. “With such a diverse range of businesses, we need to keep looking ahead,” he says. “In tourism particularly, visitor expectations are shifting. People want participation, not just observation. AI felt like a way to think more clearly about future strategy.”

For Glyn, the motivation was operational and cautious. “AI is everywhere now,” he says. “But if you don’t understand it properly, it can be risky. You could act on incorrect outputs. You could expose data. I wanted to understand what it really is, what it can and can’t do.”

One of the most valuable elements of the workshops was structured scenario planning.

“In the past, only large corporates could afford teams to sit and analyse future scenarios,” Colin explains. “AI levels the playing field and gives SMEs at least a window into that kind of thinking. But you have to approach it properly, with the right prompts and the right processes.”

The cohort itself brought together business leaders from across sectors including hospitality, professional services, manufacturing and retail.

“It was interesting to see the range of businesses in the room,” Glyn says. “Everyone’s trying to work out what AI means for them. That made it feel less like a technical course and more like a strategic conversation.”

Participating together also strengthened Holker’s internal dialogue.

“I was thinking about opportunity and blue-sky ideas,” Colin says. “Glyn was thinking about risk and governance. Having those perspectives side by side was important.”

Strategy to reality: Burlington Stone

With previous experience of Knowledge Transfer Partnership-style collaboration, Holker had confidence in how academic-business partnerships can work in practice and the potential value of student-led innovation.

While the workshops developed awareness, the most significant impact has been felt at Burlington Stone, a bespoke stone manufacturer supplying premium architectural stonework globally.

The business faces two interconnected structural challenges: safeguarding critical skills and improving technological competitiveness.

“We’ve got nobody below 40 in the factory, so when people retire, that knowledge walks out of the door. At the same time, we’re competing in a global bespoke market where we can’t justify the cost of manually programming CNC for one-off pieces. So the challenge is twofold, protecting decades of embedded expertise and finding smarter ways to stay competitive.”

Ella Hardman, an MSci student from the School of Computing and Communications, focused on two priorities: using AI to turn customer AutoCAD drawings into factory-ready outputs and generating CNC code to make better use of existing machinery.

When early testing showed AI struggled to interpret complex drawings, Ella developed a Python-based proof-of-concept that captures key design variables and feeds them into a large language model to generate simplified drawings and CNC code. The next stage will involve tailoring the system to Burlington’s specific machines and embedding safeguards to ensure reliability.

If successful, the impact could be significant: reducing reliance on scarce specialist skills, capturing embedded knowledge in structured systems, increasing CNC utilisation and strengthening cost competitiveness.

“It’s still proof of concept, but it’s shifted our thinking,” Glyn says. “We’ve gone from simply recognising the problem to seeing a possible pathway forward. Ultimately, this is about survival. If we want to attract younger people into the business and stay competitive, it can’t all be manual processes. It has to feel modern.”

Glyn runs IT across the estate, supporting around 80 users across multiple sites, so he knows exactly what additional capacity represents.

“Having a student dedicated to this project, backed by the University, has been huge,” he says. “It’s not just Ella’s input, it’s the wider support behind her. She can draw on expertise across campus that we simply don’t have access to internally.”

Broadening horizons at Holker Hall & Gardens

Alongside the Burlington project, Holker also developed a second student brief for Holker Hall & Gardens focused on shaping an experiential tourism strategy. The project explores how the visitor offer can evolve to attract younger audiences and families, including reimagining the under-utilised Shire Yard courtyard as a more participatory, experience-led space.

Holker has also begun conversations with the University Library archive team about exploring historic estate material, opening further opportunities for collaboration in heritage interpretation and storytelling.

“That’s the great thing about engagement with Lancaster University,” Colin says. “You open one door at the University and it leads into a corridor of other doors and opportunities.”

A collaboration that compounds over time

Holker’s relationship with Lancaster University may have stretched back decades, but until recently it had been periodic rather than embedded. The AI Digital Catalyst programme has marked a shift towards more active and sustained collaboration.

“It’s definitely whetted the appetite,” Glyn says. “AI is everywhere at the moment. It’s in the headlines, it’s in boardroom conversations, and everyone’s talking about how it’s going to transform industries. So the question for us is how does it benefit our organisation?”

For a Group whose interests span heritage tourism, land management and advanced manufacturing, the programme could not be more timely.

“The programme couldn’t have come at a better time,” Glyn adds. “Lancaster made it accessible and engaging, and it’s given us the confidence to explore what’s possible in a structured way. It’s not about chasing hype. It’s about understanding where AI genuinely adds value.”

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus

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