Community Heritage

 

Global Link has been running community heritage projects since 2013.

Our work began with the ground-breaking National Heritage Lottery funded project, Documenting Dissent, in which we worked with local groups of volunteers to research histories of dissent, activism and protest in and around Lancaster. Building on the initial Documenting Dissent project, we went on to run a series of Heritage Fund projects that added more stories to the Documenting Dissent digital heritage platform.

In 2019, Global Link teamed up with academics from Lancaster University and the University of St Andrews to run a community heritage partnership project that drew on stories gathered during the Documenting Dissent projects. Mobilise! sought to encourage active citizenship and increase people’s confidence about engaging in political and civic life.

Global Link has also recently led a large European peace heritage project. Learning from the Past (2018-2021) was an Erasmus+ funded project that charted histories of peace and internationalism across Europe during the interwar years and then used this heritage as a stimulus for arts workshops and events with young people and the wider community.

The Learning from the Past (LFTP) team was also awarded further Erasmus+ funding for a follow-up project. Sharing Learning from the Past with Youth in Europe brought together 30 people from the LFTP partner countries for a week-long training event in Kraków, Poland, in November 2022 to share best practice and strengthen our capacities to develop heritage projects with young people.

Our Documenting Dissent and Learning from the Past projects were featured in a e-book as part of the project Beyond Commemoration: Community, Collaboration and Legacies of the First World War.  Download the extract about our projects from the book War and its Aftermath.

Global Link is currently leading a Heritage Fund regional partnership project, Migration Stories NW (2021-2024), involving five organisations across North West England. Each partner has worked with local adults and young people to research and document histories of migration in and out of the North West from the Roman period to the present day. Our project outputs demonstrate how the North West has always been a place of migration with people moving in and out from other parts of the British Isles and other parts of the world as a result of conflict, colonialism and trade, as well as in search of work opportunities and a better life.