Interest in Heritage Activities

The 7-year-long consultation process has helped to tease out what sorts of
activities young people may want to participate in that have relevance or link to heritage.

Initial ideas generated by young people were honed into a set of outlined potential activities. All of the proposed activities were devised from the starting point of young people actively participating in co-production, design and delivery rather than as opportunities to engage more passively (i.e. as audience members).

The types of heritage activities were further explored with 25 young people during the M Shed visit and “Feast” event in the summer of 2021 and in subsequent one to one and small group meetings.  The activities cited were:

◦ Building exploration and design workshops

◦ History of Old Market workshops

◦ Social history and arts based combination workshops – e.g. banner making, song writing, etc

◦ Film project

◦ Performance project

◦ Choir project

◦ Creative tours led by young people – of Old Market and “their Bristol”.

◦ Exhibition creating – visual art, photography, curation

◦ Oral history project e.g. collating and using real stories of people who have been involved with 1625 over the past 38 years – valuing current / recent heritage by documenting for the future;

◦ Inter-generational project – exploring the perception of history and heritage from different viewpoints (a key theme that has arisen so far from the History Commission’s work)

◦ Research group – e.g. visiting Bristol Archives and Museums and analysing source materials

◦ Visiting other exhibitions, events and projects (heritage projects and community projects)

Interest in these activities was tested further through the in-depth one-to-one interviews in April 2022. Perhaps, unsurprisingly the most interest was in participating in activities which seemed most immediate to young people (cookery, helping other organisations work well with young people and designing spaces).

Qualitative comments from young people showed that many were interested in taking part in creative production: