IVE Secures National Lottery Funding for Ignite Yorkshire, A Revolution in Industrial Heritage

We’re delighted to announce that IVE has secured funding for the next four years of “Ignite Yorkshire,” a project that will forge a new relationship between young people and Yorkshire’s industrial heritage.

£962,300 has been awarded through the Heritage Lottery Fund’s (HLF) “Kick the Dust” programme to launch Ignite Yorkshire which will see IVE partnering with heritage & cultural organisations across Yorkshire to inspire a renewed, revived and re-invigorated passion for Yorkshire’s rich culture and history among the region’s young people.

Ignite Yorkshire places young people and their ideas at the centre of heritage development, aiming to ensure its relevance for current and future generations. Through a range of heritage, creative and youth sector organisations Ignite Yorkshire will engage groups of young people with activities ranging from canal conservation and stone masonry to music festivals and augmented reality – reimagining the past, present and future.

This next round of funding comes after a 6 month development phase that saw us consulting widely with young people, partner organisations and other stakeholders. Partner organisations delivered more than 41 themed taster sessions with nearly 500 young people taking part.

Heritage skills taster session at the National Coal Mining Museum

Through our work connecting together young people and Yorkshire’s industrial heritage Ignite Yorkshire will:

• Equip a new generation of young people with the skills needed to preserve these important historical buildings, ensuring they’re maintained for the next generation to appreciate.
• Provide work skills and career opportunities for young people interested in heritage and conservation.
• Reinterpret Yorkshire’s industrial history to fit the ongoing narrative of Yorkshire today and find ways for young people to understand and engage with Yorkshire’s past.
• Help heritage organisations build long term strategies for continuing to attract visitors and tell their story to future generations.

IVE’s Ignite Yorkshire Project Manager Marie Millward said:

“Yorkshire is rightly recognised worldwide as a cradle of innovation for the industrial revolution and it is hard to escape the influence of that age. It is visible in the buildings, waterways and infrastructure of the towns and cities of the region, influencing our sense of place, our heritage and our economy. As many traditional industries pass into memory, what does this history and the physical marks it make mean to young people born in the 21st century?

Hidden Depths Performance by Canal & River Trust

Ignite Yorkshire will explore new ways to make heritage relevant to a new generation so that they can play a dynamic role in how it will be protected, managed, maintained and presented in the future.

The project will equip young people to curate stories and maintain and develop industrial buildings and settings with a mix of traditional skills and new, digital technology. We will look at the relationship between young people, museums and heritage locations and support staff and volunteers to provide a space for young people to participate, flourish and lead with their own ideas.

Working with our strategic partner, Canal and River Trust, six partner organisations across Yorkshire and supporting partners, including The Heritage Craft Alliance we can reach out to young people from all sorts of backgrounds with a diverse programme opf activities. By progressively testing out dynamic new ways of working as a partnership, we will develop and share best practice in youth heritage engagement – positively influencing the practice of heritage, youth, education and cultural sectors for years to come.

Over the next 4 years IVE will work with our partners , to deliver new and ambitious ways of engaging young people. In year one, young people will learn boat handling and navigation skills with Canal Connections and explore how inland waterways were a crucial catalyst in Yorkshire’s industrial revolution. They will develop guided boat trips called Time Travel Cruises in Leeds and Skipton an intergenerational activity looking at past and present aspects of the waterways and their communities. They will find new ways to share their research and sense of place with a wider audience.

The Sobriety Project & Yorkshire Waterways Museum  is planning two music festivals, that will be curated and delivered by young people. Other young people will live aboard historic boats , leading residential adventures along the canals and making a film about the town of Goole.

Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust

Working with Swinton Lock Activity Centre, young people will rethink and create a new brand identity for their home in the Dearne Valley, an area that has seen incredible landscape and social changes in recent years following the decline of key industries followed by a large regeneration scheme. They will research and select stories and use their creativity to reappraise their local history and present it in new ways relevant to young people today.

The industrial revolution impacted, and was fuelled by, even the most rural parts of the region North Yorkshire Youth will be digging deeply into this with a fresh take on heritage skills and creative and outdoor activities exploring North Yorkshire’s dyanmic landscapes.

Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust  will create welcoming safe spaces for young people at their sites and will be building on the brilliant response from their previous work offering taster sessions on blacksmithing. Young people on work placements will work with the interactors at Kelham Island Museum to research a historical person of their choosing linked to the history of the area. They will then create a character who they can perform to tell a very human story about the rich history of the place.  We will also be exploring ways to connect successful programmes around fishing and ecology with Education Through Angling with the rich and ancient industrial heritage story in the wooded valleys around their sites.

The National Coal Mining Museum will build their relationships with young people through drama workshops, working with young people with special educational needs. They will also provide an enterprise challenge responding to a real life opportunity at the museum, further work with The Writing Squad and an event which will be designed, planned and delivered by young people.

Collectively, we will be setting up new youth boards across Yorkshire supporting young people to become active decision makers for future heritage developments and to steer the direction of how young people are positively viewed as customers, stakeholders and custodians of heritage.

Harry Walker, Youth Steering Group member at Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust added: “I am very thrilled about the scheme. It’s already been far greater than I thought it was going to be. I’m looking forward to what’s coming up over the next four years. It’s a step towards recruiting more young people into museums and for young people to develop their knowledge of Sheffield’s Industrial Heritage.”

Funding has been awarded through HLF’s “Kick the Dust” programme. HLF’s pioneering pilot grant programme distributes £10m from the National Lottery to youth and heritage 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 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.

24-year-old Alex Smyth, a Heritage Ambassador from Hull, said: “It has been a brilliant experience learning about the Heritage Lottery Fund’s work and exploring ways of involving more young people in heritage. I’m thrilled that the Ignite Yorkshire 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 on the Ignite Yorkshire project you can follow us on twitter @igniteyorks where we share updates on the various work delivered by our partners. If you’re interested in Ignite Yorkshire and wish to know more, please contact Marie Millward at marie@weareive.org