The HistoricScot Youth Forum was established to understand how to get young people volunteering and involved in the heritage sector. Historic Environment Scotland (HES) have been involved with Young Scot, in a 24 month partnership to help expand the engagement, participation and involvement of younger generations from different backgrounds to influence their activity and decision-making processes.

In previous conversations, there has been a multi-generational issue, especially regarding younger generations. Over the past 18 months, Young Scot have been tackling this problem of the lack of young generation involvement. Their results are presented in this report and contribute towards the Historic Environment Scotland 2019-22 corporate plan.

The report is spilt into three key themes: Community and Schools, Volunteering and Work, and HES sites all with a focus on future engagement of young people within the heritage sector. These recommendations are based off results from surveys.

Community and Schools Responses

For many, school is the first time people will engage with the historic environment. It’s highly likely that those who engage with historic environments as an adult have had experiences as a child, so ensuring sites are engaged with schools is crucial. 

The majority of young people nowadays find their information through online social media platforms, so if they aren’t connected to HES platforms, they aren’t going to be engaged with it. For 32% of respondents, they didn’t have a connection to historical places around Scotland, despite 47% expressing interest. 

Through their research, Young Scot have created these recommendations for the future: 

• Start discussions with marginalised communities about how their heritage can be represented. 
• Create history resources that are widely accessible for young people to learn and connect with. 
• Develop relationships with schools and spread awareness of HES in classroom settings. 
• Facilitate and engage with schools who have decided to visit sites and keep them engaged afterwards. 

Volunteering and Work Responses

Volunteering can be an important factor for individuals entering employment into the sector. Survey results show that 3/4 of respondents hadn’t considered a career in the historic environment but 60% of people wanted to know the ways work opportunities can engage them. Currently, the heritage sector attracts volunteers that are male around the age of 35 (according to Young Scot research). 

Lack of awareness towards employment, partnered with minimal advertisements are just two of the barriers which stopped people volunteering. If no one can see the opportunities, your pool of volunteers are significantly reduced.

In regards to young people, offering roles in areas they’re passionate about provides them with purpose and will help younger generations gain interpersonal skills they need. It’s especially vital now that these generations have lost time for social encounters due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

For Volunteering and Work, Young Scot had the following recommendations:

• Create an online space for young people to showcase who they are and their skills for quicker sign up or applying opportunities. 
• It’s imperative that those with or without the internet have equal access to opportunities. 
• Start promoting your volunteering opportunities on the platforms where young people are, such as Instagram and Twitter.
• For new volunteering roles, tailor the opportunity’s advertisement to a diverse group of young people through language, tone and imagery.

HES Site Responses

Currently, heritage sites host a number of opportunities for specific demographics and it’s mainly families. Due to this, there is still work to be done in engaging young people. For many heritage sites, this age range is forgotten, when they should be included.

In Young Scots’ survey, they found that if sites became more technology based, or held more events, then visits would be more enjoyable for younger generations. In a separate matter, over a quarter of respondents cannot access all parts of heritage sites due to the lack of accessibility provided.

Based on the information from the survey, Young Scot highlighted gamification as a way to engage young people within heritage sites. Gamification is applying elements of games to other activities, normally completed as an online technique to keep people engaged. Heritage sites can use this as a technique to interest young people into engaging with their content.

The report created a number of recommendations for heritage sites: 

• Make sure that all facilities are accessible to everyone, without this, there is a barrier against those with disabilities from accessing the heritage environment. 
• Design new events, exhibitions and educate young people of the cultural changes within society.
• Host events to celebrate minority groups and their heritage in Scotland’s history. 
• Make improvements to the website and the types of content it provides: specifically where people can go to learn more. One way to do this is to create hubs for different age groups. This, along with the introduction of gamification, creates an online community where young people can meet other, like-minded people.

Conclusions…

From Young Scot’s experience with engaging in the sector, there is a disproportionate underrepresentation of those from a variety of backgrounds. Heritage sites don’t reflect the diversity of the sector, the organisation, or Scotland as a whole. This barrier in particular needs to be overcome to make HES as accessible as possible for all young people.

The introduction of the latest technology can engage audiences at a younger age; paired with a strong relationship with schools, the historic environment can recharge younger generations of their love for Scotland’s culture, past and present.

Young Scot is hoping the recommendations made throughout the report can start conversations within HES on the future of younger generations in the sector. They encourage HES to continue involving young people in future plans to make a real impact. 

Want to start engaging with your volunteers more? 

Calling all heritage sites! We’ve worked with Volunteer Organisers Network and Historic Environment Scotland to create the Make Your Mark Portal, which can promote your heritage opportunities to new audiences and helps you with your volunteer management. You can find out more about Make Your Mark here. 

If you’d like to know more about us here at TeamKinetic, and how we can help you manage your volunteers, you can access our website here.