Scotland's Community Heritage Conversations: Exploring Potential

In September 2023, we hosted our first ever day-long, hybrid event! Scotland’s Community Heritage Conversations 2023: Exploring Potential was held in person at The Engine Shed in Stirling and online via Microsoft Teams.

This event was a fantastic opportunity for us all to get together to talk about resilience and celebrate grassroots community heritage. The last few years have been difficult for the heritage sector and the aftereffects of the pandemic along with ongoing challenges brought by the cost-of-living crisis and the threat of climate change continue to face us all. We were joined on the day by community groups, volunteers and heritage professionals from across the country, and our co-created agenda was full of inspiring speakers, engaging workshops and plenty of networking opportunities. A huge thank you to everyone who came along and made it such a fabulous day!

Scotland’s Community Heritage Conversations (SCHC) is an event series that brings together volunteers, community groups and heritage professionals.

Launched in November 2020 as a digital re-imagining of Scotland’s Community Heritage Conference, it has grown rapidly in popularity and attracts attendees and speakers from right across Scotland and beyond.

SCHC was developed to provide an engaging and approachable forum for sharing experiences and opportunities, discussing emerging policy and practice, and supporting one another through new and innovative solutions as we moved through the pandemic towards recovery and renewal. Previous Conversations have celebrated resilience within community groups, looked at adapting through digital, discussed exciting new ideas in youth empowerment and examined the connections between heritage and wellbeing.

All Conversations are free to attend and comprise a blend of talks followed by a Q&A, informal coffee break rooms, live polls and a lively concluding discussion. Those of you familiar with the Community Heritage Conference will also be pleased to know that the rapid-fire One Minute Mayhem, a 60-second ‘open mike’ soapbox, also has a popular slot on the agenda.

The conversations are delivered through a partnership of Historic Environment Scotland, Archaeology Scotland, The Chartered Institute for Archaeologists and the Scottish Council on Archives, who together coordinate a wide range of contributors from public bodies, third sector organisations, and community groups.

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