Young People in Focus

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Young People and Heritage

Background and aims

In 2002, TSA was commissioned by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to undertake a literature review about young people and heritage. The HLF is responsible for a range of activities in relation to heritage. These include physical heritage sites such as museums, galleries, and parks; areas of natural beauty; and local historical buildings and monuments.

Young people had been identified by the HLF as a target group for their educational programmes. One outcome of this was the ‘Young Roots’ programme, which is now running nationally across the UK. This project, and related activities run by the HLF, had raised questions about young people's attitudes to and view of heritage. Does ‘heritage’ have a different meaning for young people compared to other age groups? It is for this reason that TSA was asked to undertake a literature review.

The project started in late 2002, and has now been completed. The aim was to focus on literature relating to young people's views about and attitudes to heritage, broadly defined as above. In order to keep the task manageable, the review focussed on the main academic and unpublished (‘grey’) literature, and on UK literature from 1995 onwards. The aim was to provide a synthesis of this literature, to help HLF to frame its thinking about 'next steps' in relation to young people and heritage.

This project has now been completed, and the literature review has now been published by the HLF. A copy of the report is available from HLF or TSA. The results of the review are being used by HLF to frame and develop future work in this area.

Project staff

Dr Debi Roker and Helen Richardson were responsible for this project.

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