How should heritage be funded? What are the opportunities and challenges around public, private and philanthropic funding models? These are some of the key questions underpinning the 2024 Heritage Debate. This year the The Historic Environment Forum worked in partnership with The Heritage Alliance to produce a series of case studies which will contribute to the debate – sharing different models of funding heritage, as well as a diversity of views on the subject.
Sarah Elie, Executive Director of Somers Town Community Association
What type of funding has been effective in supporting your work?
Somers Town Community Association’s history as an organisation began in 1985, so will be 40 years old next year. We serve a community located in a place with lots of significant history: Somers Town was birthplace of Mary Shelley, home to the British Library and the Francis Crick Institute.
Our community centres have been important, trusted spaces at the heart of this vibrant and diverse community, with the built environment and cultural heritage of Somers Town underpinning a lot of our work. This includes our involvement in developing a Neighbourhood Plan, working with Somers Town Neighbourhood Forum – a lot of this work is focussed on heritage.
Camden Council has been very good at funding community centres, through a succession of funds. They fund our core – what we call “keeping the lights on” – including providing for caretakers, cleaners and centre manager posts. We pay back in rent a proportion of the funding we receive. But to be really effective in delivering for the community, we also need to attract corporates who will pay a venue hire rate that reflects the convenience of our location. A significant proportion of our income is therefore from venue hire and the rest is trust-funding.
What setbacks have you experienced related to funding?
As well as making money through commercial avenues, we need to provide for community use in what has traditionally been a deprived area. This is one aspect of a juxtaposition we are dealing with. It is a changing community. There is a heritage subgroup within the Neighbourhood Plan initiative looking at how major development in the area has the potential to impact the heritage that makes Somers Town what it is, including the built environment. Obviously as the space develops, you might improve the deprivation. And heritage itself can be part of the appeal for better-off people moving into an area. But you also risk losing some of that tradition and culture. This can have material consequences for those that are effectively left behind, because it becomes harder for someone like me to fundraise for projects when funders are looking at the indices of deprivation. Therefore, we need to make sure that the wider community benefits from any development. If we are successful in getting the Neighbourhood Plan through – it goes out to referendum next year – it will be the first such plan in an urban area like this. This would continue to facilitate development, but in such a way that the heritage and the community won’t be lost in the middle of it.
What solutions are required to address funding challenges in heritage?
I think collaboration is key. It’s going to be around better using the assets that we have and for us that is about thinking at a community level. For example, we have been working closely with other local buildings (e.g. places of worship) to be more strategic in being able to offer the community warm spaces in winter and cool spaces in summer. We are also working with partners on issues like homelessness and community resilience – again using the historic built environment and other built assets to ensure our response is fit for purpose. So, as well as having cultural/ community significance as places of connection or solace, our heritage becomes a vital part of our planning for the future. And as an organisation, we’re starting to have important conversations about our own resilience: where do we go from here? How do we fund ourselves? Who should be at the table having these conversations? So that’s the next step for us. We’re writing our business plan for the next financial year and seeing where we can go with that.
