Children and young people's participation: practice examples

Youthlink Scotland: engaging young people in heritage

With funding from the National Lottery Heritage fund, YouthLink Scotland supported young people and their youth workers across Scotland to conduct research on heritage topics in their communities.

Using a youth-led research approach, 100 young people from 10 youth groups, aged between 12 and 21 as part of the projects Scotswummin and Youngwummin  explored the inspirational stories of women in their communities and the impact of WW1 on young women in Scotland.

The model for both projects was train the trainers, in which YouthLink Scotland provided training to 20 early career youth workers in developing their youth work skills and supporting young people to conduct youth-led research. YouthLink Scotland also worked with heritage partners including Glasgow Women’s Library  for Scotswummin and the National Library of Scotland  for Youngwummin. These partners provided training for the youth workers and young people in heritage skills including curating and exhibiting and exhibition space to share their research findings.  Exhibiting the young people’s research provided an opportunity not only for the young people to have a creative outlet for their findings but to meet a key outcome of the project, ensuring that a wider range of people engage with heritage.

All young people who took part had an opportunity to work towards the Participative Democracy Certificate which is worth 2 credits at SCQF level 5. This award acknowledges and develops communication, decision-making, and negotiation skills in the context of democratic engagement.

YouthLink Scotland also developed a resource for engaging young people in heritage using a youth-led research approach. This resource draws on the learning from both Scotswummin and Youngwummin from the perspectives of YouthLink Scotland, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the heritage partners, youth workers and young people. Photographs from the exhibitions and films produced by the young people can also be found in this resource.

The same model of youth-led research is now being used for a new project called On Our Wave Length where young people are being supported to conduct research on the environmental impacts on their coastal communities.