Heritage and climate action in communities
Heritage and climate action in communities
The Our Heritage, Our Future team is supporting communities to safeguard their heritage with Community Heritage and Climate Action Plans (CHCAPs).
By identifying the heritage of buildings, places and traditions that are important to the community, we explore future threats and opportunities, including the impacts of climate change.
We facilitate a series of workshops and activities which generate the contents of the action plan, then continue to support your community as you add to, update and implement the plan over time.
What is a Community Heritage Climate Action Plan?
Who is it for?
Community groups with an interest in exploring, recording and protecting the heritage of their local area. Your group doesn’t need to have an existing heritage focus to take part.
What does it involve?
Send a paragraph detailing the need for a heritage and climate action plan in your area to communities@keepscotlandbeautiful.org. We will review and get in touch to discuss if an action plan is right for you.
Following an initial meeting, we will run a series of FREE sessions with your group, including:
- Tell us about your heritage workshop
- Place Standard Tool workshop
- Climate change impacts on heritage workshop
- Explore the potential impacts of climate change in your area workshop
- Card sort activity
- Community planning session
Our project team will collate the information gathered across the workshops into a bespoke Community Heritage Climate Action Plan.
Throughout the process, you will have access to:
- A dedicated project officer
- A network of like-minded communities and individuals across Scotland
- Support to engage the wider community
- Signposting to funding opportunities and resources
How much does it cost?
This is a completely FREE service, made possible by Historic Environment Scotland and The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with thanks to The National Lottery players.
We offer a range of heritage services which can form part of your action plan and engage your wider community. Our full menu of heritage services can be found here on the Our Heritage, Our Future web page.
Tell us about your heritage
Our team can assist community groups in hosting a workshop to explore their local built, cultural and natural heritage.
It is a great opportunity for members of the public and community groups to discuss what local heritage is important to them and how we can provide future support.
Place Standard Tool workshop
The Place Standard Tool is a way of assessing places.
Whether the place is well established, undergoing change or is still being planned, we can use the tool, applied with the Your Historic Place lens, to help community groups explore connections between place, people and their historic environment.
Climate change impacts on heritage
The climate change impacts on heritage workshop is an interactive presentation which allows groups to learn about the climate emergency, look at how heritage is affected by climate change locally, regionally and on a global scale and think about how heritage can be preserved in their area.
This FREE workshop can be tailored specifically to each group. A session handout is provided with links to resources and a list of support that Keep Scotland Beautiful offers.
Explore the potential impacts of climate change in your area
This session is a fun exercise that helps community groups to think about future possibilities for their local areas.
We invite groups to close their eyes, relax and listen to a short voice recording that will take them on a journey around their local area, 10 years from now. As they move around the community in their minds, they're asked to observe what they see and hear.
After the 10-minute recording is finished, we ask them to make a few notes on anything of interest that they observed in their imagination. We then ask everyone to share anything particularly useful or striking that this exercise has revealed.
Card sort activity: planning your actions
The card sort activity allows community groups to:
- Review and select various actions to reduce the effect of climate change on heritage
- Identify activities and skills training to explore, record and promote heritage.
The cards are divided into the following themes: Heritage, Nature, Adaptation, Energy, Food Action, Support, Travel and Waste so groups can choose which heritage and climate actions they feel will most benefit their local area. The cards indicate affordability, simplicity and timescales so groups can discuss the practical application of each action and select and schedule them in the short, medium and long term. Our team will guide each group through the themes explored in the cards.
Community planning session
A community planning session allows groups to shortlist positive climate and heritage actions for their community and discuss them with other local community groups, encouraging collaboration.
Groups can then work together to create an implementation plan for shortlisted climate interventions and prioritise those for immediate action.
Bringing your action plan to life
The Our Heritage, Our Future team are working with community groups across the entirety of Scotland, from the Western Isles to Dumfries and Galloway, to produce Community Heritage Climate Action Plans. Once plans are complete, our team can provide accredited skills training, workshops and resources to help facilitate short, medium and long term actions. Check out the community groups below to see how they have benefitted from developing their own Community Heritage Climate Action Plans.
We have also been working with the following community groups to raise awareness of built, cultural and natural heritage and provide training and resources.
News
Check out our news stories from around Scotland as we work with communities to celebrate their built, cultural and natural heritage.
A series of activities will take place in Dumfries over the summer holidays to encourage people to engage with the built, natural and cultural heritage of the area.
We're running the sessions as part of the Our Heritage, Our Future programme, in partnership with Summerhill Community Centre.
We support the 