Heart of England Blue Badge Course

Train to be a Blue Badge Tourist Guide in the Heart of England

  • Course status: Approved
  • Application closing date: 27 Mar 2027

The British Guild of Tourist Guides is pleased to announce the prestigious training course for the Heart of England Blue Badge tourist guiding qualification, the gold standard in tourist guiding. Commencing in May 2027 and lasting for one year, the course has been accredited by the Institute of Tourist Guiding.   

The training includes the skills necessary to introduce visitors to our towns, cities, countryside, architecture, art, history and much more. The Heart of England, bordering on Wales, Southern England and the East Midlands, is one of the largest of the national tourism regions and the training is centred on five Tourism Market Focus areas.

  1. The Central Midlands
  2. Oxford & the Cotswolds
  3. Severn and Wye valleys and the Marches
  4. Shakespeare Country & Coventry
  5. Staffordshire and the Potteries

The Heart of England region includes some of the most visited and popular tourism locations in Britain: Stratford-upon Avon - Shakespeare’s Birthplace, the Cotswolds - with its honey-coloured towns and villages, Oxford-‘city of gleaming spires’ and Birmingham - said to have ‘more canals than Venice’ but with definitely ten times the energy!

There are places that changed the globe, such as the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site – the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, or the Potteries - centuries of innovation from from Josiah Wedgwood to Emma Bridgewater. Add to this the amazing museums, world class art galleries, medieval castles, cathedrals, sporting events, cultural arenas and retail centres!

There is a long literary heritage; from William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, George Eliot and Jane Austen to JRR Tolkien, C S Lewis, Colin Dexter and Lee Child. Here also are the musical roots of Sir Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, the Three Choirs Festival as well as great pop icons: Robbie Williams, Black Sabbath, Slade, ELO and The Specials.

It’s not just history and culture, the region has some of England’s most celebrated landscapes, including the Wye Valley, The Cotswolds, Shropshire Hills and Staffordshire Moorlands. All good reasons to train to be a Heart of England Tourist Guide!

Applicants should be 18 or over, have a desire to be self-employed (full or part time) and have access to a computer and a car. Local knowledge or interest in the Heart of England is essential and previous experience in tourist guiding or a public facing role is desirable. You must have time to research and study independently of timetabled teaching hours.

Applicants who are fluent in a foreign language are particularly encouraged to apply.

The course, leading to the Institute of Tourist Guiding’s Heart of England Blue Badge qualification only runs approximately every seven years and student numbers will be limited.