British National Lottery: Youth Roots Heritage Fund
One of the British National Lottery‘s key supporters of local projects is the Heritage Lottery Fund. Every year they set aside a fund to support schemes that encourage young people to leaner more about the heritage they inherit.
The funding for this Young Roots project is allocated every April, so it is now that the budget for the next twelve months is set. This year the money from the UK lottery draw that has been donated to the fund has increased by £1 million to £4 million.
The Young Roots project has been in existence for 10 years now and grants money of up to £50,000 to projects that help 11 to 25 year olds explore areas as diverse as archeology, social history, historic buildings, natural history and the story of sport, culture and fashion.
The Chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund, Dame Jenny Abramsky, says, “As the future custodians of our heritage, it’s vital that we inspire and equip young people with the resources they need to get involved with heritage in the future.”
One project supported by the Young Roots scheme (and so the British National Lottery) was Festival City, a Norwich-based idea designed to give young people the chance to learn and use skills in digital media to create an exhibition charting the history of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. The festival has run from 1772 to the present day and the young participants in the project created an impressive display illustrating the historic churches and venues used in the events. During this project, the youngsters learned new skills from historians, sound designers, journalists and professional photographers to produce an exhibition of photographs and historic documents as well as a podcast, which was shown in the Forum Norwich during July last year.
Clearly the funds from the UK lottery draw and the European lottery is being put to great use in helping protect our heritage for the future.
If you would like to learn more about the Heritage Lottery Fund, please go to their website.
















