All five Heritage 2020 working groups have now published action plans and these can be viewed on each group’s page alongside information on the groups’ most recent meetings.
The working groups are:
- Capacity building: The Capacity Building group is currently focusing on apprenticeships as opportunities for skills development and has recently held a workshop on apprenticeship reform. The group is also identifying core local authority service provision with respect to historic environment services.
- Constructive conservation and sustainable management: The Constructive Conservation and Sustainable Management group has two immediate areas of focus: facilitating guidance and support for the transfer of public heritage assets, and promoting the role of heritage in the regeneration of high streets.
- Discovery, identification and understanding: The group aims to enhance connections between practice and research to maximise the impact of heritage research on practical challenges. It is currently researching the research linkages that exist between the historic environment and higher education sectors. It is planning a symposium for Early Career Researchers and the heritage environment sector to identify and promote topics of specific relevance to professional practice, and plans to look at how historic environment sector data is managed and accessed.
- Helping things to happen: The group seeks to achieve a long-term shift to a positive vision for the contribution that heritage makes to Britain. The priority is to ensure the best deal for heritage post-Brexit, by helping the sector make better use of existing evidence. A workshop to this effect was held last month; the next step will be to develop communication resources.
- Public engagement: The Public Engagement group is currently focusing on sector diversity and nurturing an ethos of cultural entitlement. It is researching and promoting diversity in governance, investigating traineeship models for the sector and opportunities for the involvement of young people through the National Citizen Service (NCS).
Full information on Heritage 2020 is available at www.heritage2020.net and you can follow on Twitter at @Heritage2020.