Almost £1m of Lottery funding for “Kick the Dust” to involve young people in Yorkshire’s heritage

IVE have been awarded £962,300 through the Heritage Lottery Fund’s (HLF) “Kick the Dust” programme, aimed at making heritage relevant for young people.

IVE has been awarded the money to create IGNITE: an industrial revolution for the 21st century. The project, delivered in partnership with the Canal and River Trust, aims to revolutionise the way young people and future generations understand and appreciate Yorkshire’s industrial heritage.

Taking place over 4 years, hundreds of young people aged 14-19 will gain a new relationship with and understanding of Yorkshire’s historic mills, workshops, towpaths, tunnels, canals and locks. They will be supported to reevaluate Yorkshire’s heritage, while also receiving specialist training and coaching in a range of heritage skills from the art of conservation, through to designing with augmented reality, from a range of cultural and heritage organisations from across the region.

These young people will be given the opportunity to engage with the region’s rich and diverse collection of historical assets, which can be traced back to the industrial revolution of the 18th century, and will reimagine this heritage for the digital age – the so-called ‘fourth industrial revolution.’ By working with state of the art technology alongside heritage crafts and through using modern-day interpretation the project aims to ignite an industrial revolution for the 21st century and inspire a renewed, revived and re-invigorated passion for Yorkshire’s rich cultural heritage among the region’s young people.

Chris Strong, Head of Skills and Enterprise at IVE said: “this programme provides an unparalleled opportunity for young people to become the heritage managers of the future. By involving the perspective of young people, this project aims to disrupt the traditional notions of heritage narrative and re-imagine its place in modern society.”

The money has been awarded through HLF’s new “Kick the Dust” programme, HLF’s pioneering new grant programme distributing £10m from the National Lottery to youth organisations across the UK. At its core is a group of young Heritage Ambassadors, who are on a mission to ‘stir up heritage’, and have helped advise on how the money should be allocated.

HLF’s Heritage Ambassadors played a major part in allocating the grants. The 17 young people aged 16-25, recruited from across the UK to work with HLF on making heritage more inclusive for people of their age group, advised HLF’s decision panel on the projects they found to be most useful and appealing.

23-year-old Alex Smyth, an HLF Heritage Ambassador from Hull, said: “I’m thrilled that the IGNITE project has won funding, as we found its plans to involve young people in Yorkshire’s industrial heritage especially appealing. Making Yorkshire’s heritage easier to participate in for more people my age is very important to me, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the project progresses in the future.”

For more information see https://www.hlf.org.uk/about-us/news-features/kicking-storm-young-people-shake-heritage