Young people’s project receives lottery funding
A project helping young people in Nuneaton and Bedworth celebrate the heritage of the borough has been awarded a twenty five thousand pound boost from the national lottery.
The Building Sights programme was created by Coventry-based Mercurial Arts and is led by young people from Warwickshire’s VOX youth forum (managed by Warwickshire County Council’s Youth and Community Service), with participants from homelessness charity Doorway and Pastels Day Centre.
It aims to find out why and how we as a community identify and value our built heritage, by developing a unique ‘listing’ system for buildings or sites, designing an interactive website, hosting an interactive installation in an unused town centre location, and creating an exhibition at Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery to coincide with Heritage Weekend in September.
The money has been awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Young Roots Programme, which is designed to engage 13 to 25-year-olds in learning about the heritage of the area they live.
One of the VOX members on the Building Sights steering group, said: “We want to get a bigger picture of our heritage and take advantage of new learning opportunities offered by the project, learn the reasons buildings exits, find out what stories are connected to building and record other people’s memories and opinions.
“To a group of fifteen year olds even five years can seem like a long time, by learning about our own history we hope to begin to understand and celebrate our town.”
Building Sights is lead by artists Dom Breadmore and Vanessa Oakes of Mercurial Arts in partnership with Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery.
Commenting on the award Vanessa Oakes said: “It’s been a privilege to work on the development of this project over the past year with such enthusiastic and committed young people. They are a credit to their town. This funding from the Heritage Lottery Young Roots Programme means that we can finally put all the steering group’s exciting ideas into action.”
To find out more about Warwickshire County Council’s Youth and Community Service, visit http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/youthandcommunity.