New 'Our Heritage Our Future' programme announced
30 June 2023
We’ve announced a new programme of activity aimed at inspiring community heritage and climate action.
People are coming together in neighbourhoods across Scotland to enhance and celebrate the places they care about. Our programme will support this activity by inspiring communities to consider how their historic environment can both benefit from, and be a driver for, local action.
Through the Our Heritage, Our Future: a community heritage and climate action project, we will support communities to explore, record and protect their heritage. We will help them to understand the impact of climate change on that heritage through hands-on activities, skills development and youth learning programmes.
Katie O’Donnell, our Communities Manager said, “The funding for this exciting new programme will enable us to support communities to identify the historic assets that they value which will then form the basis of a programme of community heritage and climate action.
“We will be working with pilot communities and schools initially to take our learning from previous activities to develop an engaging and inspiring programme of activities.
“We’re delighted to be in receipt of funding from both the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic Environment Scotland. The recent publication of the new strategy for Scotland’s historic environment, 'Our Past, Our Future' puts people front and centre in protecting our heritage and facing the climate and biodiversity crises; we hope to support local communities on this journey.”
The new programme has been made possible thanks to development funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a three-year funding allocation from Historic Environment Scotland through the Partnership Fund grant Scheme – a new fund which supports organisations that share the strategic priorities of HES and projects aimed to have a positive national impact for Scotland’s historic environment.
Susan O’Connor, Head of Grants at HES, said: “I am delighted to announce the recipients of our new Partnership Fund which we launched just last year. We are supporting a diverse range of organisations as part of the scheme, from archaeology and traditional skills development to community engagement and climate action, and I look forward to seeing these projects in action over the coming years.”
