Community Engagement

We work with you to creatively use heritage to build sustainable relationships with your communities.  Our team can help develop inventive and interesting ways to engage people with their local heritage, putting them at the heart of projects.  From inception to delivery we can support your project with a range of people-focused services.

Our services include

  • Getting to know your audiences, and any barriers to participation, through targeted consultation
  • Planning creative heritage experiences and volunteer engagement opportunities
  • Writing fully evidenced Activity and Community Engagement Plans
  • Reviewing and refocusing existing engagement planning 
  • Advising on grant-funding opportunities
  • Identifying skills and learning needs 
  • Supporting skills development in project officers and volunteers through training
Family-friendly consultation activity ‘stations’ were set up during special events at Barrow Hill Roundhouse Railway Museum. This feedback helped determine the local appetite for arts based learning and engagement.

Some previous projects

In 2019 we developed Community Engagement Plans to support North West Leicestershire District Council’s expressions of interest for Historic England’s High Street Heritage Action Zone funding. Working to a tight timeframe, we carried out public consultation in the towns of Coalville and Kegworth to establish patterns of cultural consumption and levels of community interest in a range of potential activities aimed at engaging people with their high street heritage. Using the outcomes of this, we scoped and costed a range of locally-themed events and learning opportunities with delivery partners and set out some measures of success for engagement in the proposed projects.

Creative Black Country commissioned TDR Consultant Gwendolen to develop a NLHF application to deliver the Funny Roots heritage project alongside the 2019 Funny Things comedy festival in Wolverhampton. The project aimed to bring people together through shared heritage and culture, intergenerational work and integrating health and wellbeing benefits. Consultation was carried out with potential audiences to determine need and interest. Initial historical research identified heritage assets and partners. The project subsequently explored how humour in the region today is rooted in the heritage of comedians from the past. The project uncovered stories of some of the Black Country’s forgotten stars, put these performers back in the spotlight and started a conversation about how we have laughed in the past.

TDR Consultant Gwendolen was commissioned by artists Kidology to support their ACE funded residency project at Barrow Hill Roundhouse Railway Museum. The project aimed to re-engage the local community, particularly families, with the collections after a museum refurbishment. She attended events to capture visitor responses, devised an artist’s tracker to monitor the artist’s experiences and recorded interviews with KS3 pupils.

The project involved developing a ‘Building Engagement Toolkit’ as a learning legacy of the project. This mapped out regeneration activity throughout the eight local authorities within Derbyshire Council areas, identified the audiences it might impact and the opportunities it might create for local arts and heritage. It also included information and advice about how to form a future ‘artist in residence’ opportunity in the museum.