Heritage Lottery Fund: Young Roots

Overview

This programme is designed for organisations that want to provide young people aged between 11 and 25 with active roles in planning and delivering a heritage project.

They want to encourage young people to develop their own views about heritage and they ask you to demonstrate that you have involved them in thinking about your project before you apply.

Aim of the programme

The programme is intended to:

• provide new opportunities for a wide range of young people aged 11 to 25 to help shape and deliver engaging heritage projects;
• bring heritage and youth organisations together to combine knowledge and experience; and
• create opportunities to celebrate young people’s achievements in the project and share their learning with the wider community.

You will need to show them that you are bringing both heritage and youth work expertise to the project. Their research tells them that heritage organisations sometimes lack the resources to engage with young people and that youth workers are often not aware of the wealth of opportunities offered by heritage for youth work. Youth groups must work with at least one heritage partner to deliver a Young Roots project. Heritage organisations must work with at least one youth partner. You may find it useful to document what each partner will contribute to the project using the template they provide.

Your project should include opportunities to celebrate the young people’s achievements in the project, for example with an award or certificate, and share their learning with the wider community, perhaps through a performance, an exhibition or online.

Your project must relate to the culturally varied heritage of the UK. For example, young people might explore a museum textile collection, research stories in a newspaper archive, help restore a local habitat or document changes to their community over time.

Outcomes for people

With their investment, people will have:

• Developed skills
• Learnt about heritage
• Changed their attitudes and / or behaviour
• Had an enjoyable experience

Outcomes for communities

With their investment:

• Environmental impacts will be reduced
• More people and a wider range of people will have engaged with heritage
• The local area/community will be a better place to live, work or visit
• Local economy will be boosted
• Organisations will be more resilient

Outcomes for heritage

With their investment, heritage will be:

• In better condition
• Better managed
• Better interpreted and explained
• Identified/recorded

See the full guidelines here