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Helping young people celebrate heritage

Friday, 19 March 2010 11:18

Tags: funding | Heritage Lottery Fund

Heritage Lottery Fund Young people can take their environment for granted, and often miss out on the benefits of becoming actively involved in their surroundings.

However, projects across the UK are enabling young people to explore their own heritage and those of other cultures, and Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) wants to support these projects through revenue grants of between £3000 and £25,000. A spokesperson for Heritage Lottery Fund said: "Young people are the future advocates for heritage, and through our grants we are keen to encourage projects that enable them to gain new insights, skills and experiences."

The Young Roots grant programme aims to get young people aged between 13 and 25 actively involved in exploring and celebrating their heritage. Heritage includes:

Countryside and nature;
Records, archives and museums;
Designed landscapes;
Historic buildings and sites;
Industrial, transport and maritime; and;
Cultural and local traditions.

These grants are ideal for any project that educates young people about their environmental, cultural or historical inheritance: subjects that are not always explored in schools; but have the power to develop informed, conscientious young people who respect and enjoy their own and other people's backgrounds and natural surroundings.

Such projects are born out of the natural curiosity and creative instincts of young people, and have the desire and potential to facilitate the growing of skills, confidence, and relationships between young people and their local communities. The heritage of the UK is vast and varied, and so encouraging young people to connect with it requires creativity and enthusiasm on the part of the project leaders.

To receive a Young Roots grant, projects must both conform to the above, and:

Provide new opportunities for a wider range of young people aged 13 to 25 to learn about their own and others' heritage;
Allow young people to lead and take part in creative and engaging activities;
Develop partnerships between youth organisations and heritage organisations; and
Create opportunities to celebrate young people's achievements in the project and share their learning with the wider community.

Furthermore, heritage projects must also create new opportunities for young people to either volunteer in heritage or to gain skills in identifying, recording, interpreting or caring for heritage. Public and not-for-profit organisations are the only acceptable grant recipients. However, this category encompasses numerous types of projects and specifically can involve community voluntary groups; youth clubs or organisations; charities or trusts; parish councils and local authorities. There's no minimum partnership funding required to apply for this grant, but they do need some form of contribution, which they list as ‘cash or kind'.

Once project have been awarded a Young Roots grant, mentors are available to support the delivery of the programme, which suggests that the main component needed to apply for the funding is a really good idea to get young people excited about heritage, partners in place and a basic plan for how to get it all started.

Examples of heritage projects that have already been awarded the grant are the Kajans Women's Enterprise, who were awarded £24,000 for their ‘Gospel Now and Then' project to create a gospel choir which would explore the importance of music in the lives of African and Caribbean people, and Rudyard Lake Trust's ‘Wild about Fishing' project, which was awarded £24,600 to provide young people with expert tuition from fishing coaches and skills important to helping local wildlife such as building bird boxes and tidying away fishing pegs.

Heritage Lottery Fund want these projects to be designed and managed by young people, which suggests there are likely to be myplace initiatives which would be eligible for their revenue grants, as long as they are enabling their members to learn and appreciate heritage, and providing training, recognition and accreditation for them.

Heritage Lottery Fund's development team are available to provide advice and support, and also hold workshops in their office on a monthly basis.

Another benefit of applying for a Young Roots grant is that there's no deadline for applications. Decisions are delivered within 10 weeks from HLF receiving the fully filled-in application. Those wanting to apply are asked to complete thepre-application enquiry form and full application online.

More information can be obtained from Liz Shaw, Rachel Evans and Laura Birkett on 0121 616 6882/6879/6883 and by emailing westmidlands@hlf.org.uk or at http://www.hlf.org.uk.

icon HLF Youth Participation Event Presentation (5.16 MB PowerPoint)

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