Lottery cash puts heritage centre stage
Nine special places in Scotland are celebrating an injection of £2.4 million to help shape their future development.
They are the first awards to be made in Scotland through the National Lottery’s ground-breaking Great Place Scheme, which aims to put heritage at the centre of place-based regeneration.
The Great Place Scheme has been devised by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), in consultation with organisations involved in regeneration, to ensure it responds to the specific needs of Scottish places.
From city and island-wide initiatives to schemes in rural areas, the funding places heritage at the heart of joined-up thinking to create better places for people to live and visit.
The HLF invests money raised by National Lottery players to transform and sustain the UK’s heritage, making a lasting difference for heritage, people and communities.
Since 1994, the HLF has supported over 42,000 projects with more than £7.7 billion in funding across the UK, including more than £835m to over 4,000 projects throughout Scotland.
The Great Place Scheme funding will allow the successful communities to shape projects and collaborations which explore how their unique heritage can help shape the successful future of those places and contribute to tackling wider issues such as poverty, employment, health and education.
The innovative programme will help to:
Create dynamic networks and partnerships to maximise community benefit
Devise new ways to include both the built and natural heritage in the provision of local education and health services
Address inequality, involving young people and providing opportunities for training
Research the contribution made by heritage to the local economy
Explore and pilot new ways to finance heritage organisations
Build on initiatives and partnerships already in place.
As Lucy Casot, head of the HLF in Scotland, explains: “You can’t imagine Paisley without its pattern or Dunfermline without its abbey.
“Heritage and culture gives a place a unique identity and makes it special for the people that live there. It’s the roots, if you like.
“This scheme will show how building on those roots can have a hugely positive impact on local economies in terms of health, employment and education, as well as well as instilling community cohesion and pride.”
Casot adds: “Thanks to players of the National Lottery, we are enabling a step-change in thinking, encouraging local leaders to come together and recognise that heritage is a driving force for change.”
There is a desire to ensure a spread of geographic location and types of heritage, applicant and partnerships.
Awards have been made to projects across Scotland – from the Outer Hebrides to Paisley and from Renfrewshire to Galloway and East Lothian.
www.hlf.org.ukGreat Places
The first awards from the HLF under the Great Places Scheme include:
Outer Hebrides: Heritage for People – £156,000
Paisley and Renfrewshire: Developing a Cultural Destination – £250,000
Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere: PLACE (People, Land, Art, Culture, Environment) – £150,000
Glasgow: Reawakening Glasgow’s Canal – £340,100
Dunfermline: Lighting up the Auld Grey Toun – £288,000
Badenoch Heritage: Bringing the Past to the 21st Century – £352,000
Greenock: Stories from the Street – £200,000
Falkirk: Landscape, Industry and Work – £462,300
Preston, Seton, Gosford: Heritage Connections – £249,000
This article appears in the Spring 2018 edition of Vision Scotland. Further information about Vision Scotland here.