Giving Compass' Take:

• Sarah Lanchin, policy adviser for children and young people at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, describes how the organization drives youth engagement by collaborating with participants on projects that it funds. 

• What are other ways that donors can help develop youth engagement in arts programming? What are the benefits? 

• Read about how to encourage youth civic engagement through the arts. 

At NPC, we’ve been working with arts and culture charities and funders to understand what works for engaging young people. The arts landscape is changing, with budget constraints meaning we risk a whole generation of children never experiencing arts at school. Charities and funders must step up.

In this guest blog, Sarah Lanchin, policy adviser for children and young people at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, explores their approach to involving young people in the projects they fund.

It’s the 25th birthday of The National Lottery this year and we have a long history of funding heritage projects with children and young people. Through Young Roots, and more recently Kick the Dust, an ambitious £10 million programme to transform how heritage engages young people aged 11 to 25, we continue to encourage bold partnerships between heritage and youth organisations driving improvements in young people’s engagement with heritage.

Through our Young Roots and Kick the Dust programmes we know that engagement with young people is so important. Creating the right conditions to enable young people to get involved has led to them taking a lead role in planning and delivering exciting and fulfilling heritage projects. Our cohort of Kick the Dust projects have come up with some great ideas about how to engage young people in meaningful ways.

From the projects we have funded we know that encouraging children and young people to become engaged with heritage can also help to increase learning and understanding of themselves and their wider communities, whilst cultivating an interest in heritage and culture.

Read the full article about youth engagement in arts partnerships by Sarah Lanchin at NPC.