Heritage Horizons
The team are pleased to have been awarded funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to deliver an innovative heritage commissioning project across Bedfordshire between 2023 and 2026.
Harnessing the learnings of Heritage Enterprise Hub and Heritage Impact Accelerator, Heritage Horizons will support 12 practitioners from Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton to deliver well-defined heritage commissions across a variety of areas, including nature, buildings, local interest and culture. In addition to the commission, participants will receive capacity-building and network development support to enable them to realise applicable step-changes in audience development, project management, delivery, partnerships and evaluation. This will be delivered by the project team, heritage practitioners and wider university colleagues.
The project will be delivered across three commissioning tiers: Exchange, Develop and Transform. Commissioned practitioners and organisations will be on-boarded across two cohorts of six across the three year lifespan of the project.
If you are interested in applying for Heritage Horizons, or learning more about the project, sign up for our project mailing list or contact the team via email at culture@beds.ac.uk
Exchange commissions should improve the exchanging of knowledge between specific community groups in relation to a well-defined area of heritage; whether that be engaging with an area of local natural heritage, a piece of non-tangible cultural heritage or by way of preserving/growing a specific heritage-skill discipline.
Develop is for applicants to develop pioneering participatory interventions, which lead to an overall increased accessibility/awareness of a well-defined locally significant piece of heritage and a well-defined local/regional audience. This may include community and local heritage such as socio-industrial heritage or migration, engagement with Bedfordshire's nationally/internationally significant natural heritage, or the safeguarding/sharing of at-risk heritage skills. There will need to be a clearly outlined approach to sustainability and legacy.
This tier seeks to transform how a clearly defined piece of heritage is understood, safeguarded, and shared within specifically outlined communities/groups, including with support from key local heritage organisations. There will be clearly defined approaches to evaluation and project legacy, as well as data protection compliance.
Commissioned projects may focus on place-based interventions relating to specific historical periods, specific oral histories, socio-industrial heritage, natural heritage, and/or the safeguarding/sharing of at-risk local heritage skills.
