Young people’s engagements with heritage: tackling inequality & other opportunities for public policy

Abstract

Despite recent investment within the sector, still little is known about young people’s engagements with heritage programmes and activities that are informal, extracurricular, and place-based. In this paper, we argue that understanding the role and value of heritage in generating positive social, economic, and health outcomes, as well as to social infrastructure, is vital in order to inform public policy, and to better make the case for public investments into the heritage sector. Drawing on research conducted by the Institute for Community Research and Development and Arts Connect on behalf of Historic England, the paper examines two youth-driven place-based heritage projects in North West England that utilised heritage to address social exclusion as well as to improve the health and wellbeing of young people. A range of positive outcomes – such as personal development for young people, opportunities for fostering a sense of identity and belonging, participation that builds stronger and more cohesive communities, and social mobility – align to contemporary policy ambitions to cultivate ‘pride in place’. The activities produced fundamentally new spaces of engagement and interaction for communities of people across diverse ethnic, religious, gender, sexual and generational identities. The programmes place heritage squarely within the realm of social and cultural infrastructure, which has key implications for policymaking. The projects also demonstrate how ‘Levelling Up’ can work through targeted government spending – rather than any largescale policy instruments – that nourishes and sustains place-appropriate forms of social and cultural infrastructure, in turn revitalising communities.