IAA Project type: Networking grant
Duration of project: October 2023 to October 2024
Partner organisation: Valance House Museum
MOLA staff leading IAA grant: Cat Gibbs
Individual partners: Leeanne Westwood and Stacey Hickling
Project aims
There are limited opportunities for young people from diverse and underrepresented communities to engage with their local history and heritage professionals in a way that is co-created by and for them. While there are several heritage groups in the area, none are open to, or targeted at, local young people.
The key aims for this project were:
Audiences
The project
This project aimed to provide a legacy to the community excavation at Valence House in 2022, which demonstrated an appetite for meaningful and practical youth engagement with local heritage.
We reached out to local youth and heritage organisations to create a network to support young people aged 14-18, to empower them to develop, co-ordinate and establish an active and inclusive Youth Heritage Group (YHG) for the area.
The network aimed to identify barriers to current heritage engagement activities, enabling the YHG to explore the legacy of MOLA and Valence House projects, taking an active part in the development, interpretation and advocacy for their local heritage with the overall aim of raising pride in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
Through co-designed workshops, young participants designed and created a short film, which was presented at an end of project celebration event. These activities helped the young participants develop key life skills including team working, time management, problem solving and critical and creative thinking, and improve wellbeing.
