Scheme participants include Carly Smith, Aimee Gomez, Perry Louis and Paul Jolly who will individually deliver the workshops between now and the end of February 2022. The workshops will explore topics including immigration in Luton, the importance of archiving, Luton’s hat heritage and the history of dance floor jazz.

The final projects will aim to engage a wide range of people in the community and these pilot workshops will provide the HIA practitioners with the opportunity to collect useful feedback from school pupils and young people on the topic of cultural heritage.

Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Heritage Impact Accelerator (HIA) scheme is supported by the University’s over-arching Heritage Project, alongside its sister programme, the Heritage Enterprise Hub. The HIA is a 10-month long programme consisting of two cohorts of diverse, cultural practitioners, helping them to develop community-based heritage projects. The first of these cohorts was announced back in July 2021 and the application process for the second HIA cohort is now open.

Main objectives of the new school workshop pilot scheme include helping students to:

• Develop a sense of pride in where they live
• Build a strong sense of identity through exploring their heritage
• Motivate pupils to develop positive attitudes towards learning
• Build skills required to work within the heritage sector and learn about local educational pathways

Workshops will include the exploration of immigration in Luton using historic newspapers as primary sources, skill-focused sessions looking at the history of Luton and hat-making, educational packs aimed at covering the history of the jazz dance form, and knowledge exchange sessions discussing contemporary issues surrounding community activity, archive, and music.

Emma Gill, Arts & Culture Projects Manager, explained why the scheme is running these new projects: “The process of embedding these six cultural practitioners into community and school contexts ensures high quality heritage practices are made accessible to young audiences, raising aspirations and awareness to the histories, stories, and skills on their doorsteps.

“The Arts and Culture Projects team at the University will then support the practitioners to make competitive funding applications for each of the projects to be rolled out in Luton and beyond."

Schools, colleges and community centres interested in taking part in any of the workshops can contact: culture@beds.ac.uk

Photo credit: Greta Zabulyte