King is joined by host of celebs at King’s Foundation awards
The King showed off his showbusiness credentials tonight as he was joined by a host of celebrity ambassadors including David Beckham to mark his star-studded inaugural King’s Foundation Awards.
Charles, 75, whose diary remains busy despite his cancer treatment continuing, was joined at St James’ Palace in London by close friend Sir Rod Stewart and his wife Penny Lancaster, who shared a peck on the cheek with the monarch.
Actress Sienna Miller, editor Edward Enninful, model Naomi Campbell, gardener and presenter Alan Titchmarsh and chef Raymond Blanc also handed out awards.
Former England football star Beckham was recently announced as an ambassador for the King’s Foundation and met with His Majesty at Highgrove.
The awards have been designed to celebrate students, teachers, alumni and partners of his foundation which provides educational courses, wellbeing programmes and spearheads regeneration projects across the UK, inspired by the monarch’s long-standing ethos of working with nature, not against it.
King Charles III embraces Penny Lancaster as they attend the inaugural King’s Foundation charity awards at St James’s Palace in London
Tonight’s awards, which are planned to be an annual event, saw nine awards given out, culminating in the monarch personally presenting The King Charles III Harmony Award, given to an individual to recognise their long-term commitment to the foundation’s mission.
The awards also featured live demonstrations of some of The King’s Foundation’s education programmes including furniture-making, woodworking and embroidery.
The charity – which was first founded by the King in 1990 when Prince of Wales – is particularly keen to support learning and entrepreneurship across traditional arts, textiles, rural skills, health and wellbeing and even recently teamed up with CHANEL.
Its headquarter are at Dumfries House in Scotland, which was saved by a consortium led by the King, and also cares for the Castle of Mey in Caithness and Highgrove Gardens in Gloucestershire. In addition, it runs from three further educational sites in London.
At St James’ Palace tonight 250 guests were greeted by pipers from the National Piping Centre and the Rock Choir who are based in Tetbury and often perform at Highgrove.
Charles’s diary remains busy after he travelled to France for the D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations last week despite his cancer treatment continuing.
Yesterday, the King was at Windsor Castle for a ceremony which saw him present new colours to the Irish Guards and inspect the guardsmen and officers on parade.
He will also have a high-profile appearance at Trooping the Colour in London this Saturday, then attend the annual Garter Day service at Windsor Castle next Monday.
British pop icon Rod Stewart, left, former footballer David Beckham, second left and actress Sienna Miller, centre, speak to King Charles III, right
The monarch speaks to former footballer David Beckham as they attend the inaugural King’s Foundation charity awards
Charles (pictured), 75, whose diary remains busy despite his cancer treatment continuing, was joined at St James’ Palace in London by close friend Sir Rod Stewart and his wife Lady Penny Lancaster
Actress Sienna Miller, editor Edward Enninful , model Naomi Campbell, gardener and presenter Alan Titchmarsh and chef Raymond Blanc also handed out awards. Pictured, the host of celebs alongside Charles
The King’s Foundation, based at Dumfries House in East Ayrshire, is the custodian of the Highgrove Gardens in Gloucestershire and Castle of Mey in Caithness.
It offers workshops, programmes and short courses focused on heritage and craft skills at its Barley Court education centre on the Highgrove estate.
And it aims to revitalise communities through urban regeneration and planning, and support sustainable food production and teach rural skills.
The King’s Foundation is a charity founded by Charles when he was Prince of Wales in 1990.
The charity offers education courses for almost 15,000 students annually, and health and wellbeing programmes for nearly 2,000 people every year.
It also works on placemaking and regeneration projects in the UK and overseas with the aim of revitalising communities and historic buildings.
And the foundation carries out 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 more than a dozen sites abroad.
Last November, Buckingham Palace announced that the King’s long-standing charities had been rebranded in recognition of his accession to the throne,
As the Prince of Wales, Charles set up the youth charity the Prince’s Trust; the Prince’s Foundation and the grant-giving Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund (PWCF).
But 14 months after he became monarch and a week ahead of his 75th birthday, the palace announced the organisations’ names had been updated to become The King’s Trust, The King’s Foundation and King Charles III Charitable Fund.
Charles once spoke of his hope his two sons William and Harry, now the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex, would take over the Prince’s Trust, which he set up with his Navy severance pay in 1976.
But William is paving his own way as the new heir to the throne, focusing on homelessness and mental health.
Harry, amid continued fractures in family relations after his Netflix documentary and autobiography Spare, is living thousands of miles away in the US with his wife Meghan Markle having quit as a working royal.
The switch in name to The King’s Foundation meant the monarch could keep the organisation and the two others firmly under his wing, despite the demands of his role as King.
The changes also gave something of a fresh start to the former Prince’s Foundation in the wake of the cash-for-honours allegations.
The Metropolitan Police launched an investigation in February 2022 following a series of newspaper articles accusing Michael Fawcett, formerly the foundation’s chief executive and a close confidant of the King, of promising to help a Saudi billionaire donor achieve British citizenship and a knighthood.
But detectives investigating the claims announced in August last year that they were taking no further action.
The foundation’s recent initiatives have included a Winter Warmers drive with free hot drinks and soup and craft activities at Charles’s country estate Highgrove to help combat loneliness and the cost-of-living crisis.
It also collaborated on a luxury fashion line with Yoox Net-A-Porter – as part of its Modern Artisan project, which gives students from the UK and Italy the chance to design and make the sustainable line of outfits as part of a textiles skills training initiative.
Last week it was announced that former England football captain David Beckham had been named a King’s Foundation ambassador.
Beckham was confirmed as an official supporter of the organisation a few weeks after he met the monarch privately to learn more about its work.
