Making Sense of Scotland – a creative approach to engaging young people with their heritage

Did you know that Scottish residents can visit selected Historic Scotland properties for free on the first Sunday of each month up until March 2025? The Historic Sundays initiative is particularly aimed at encouraging those who have never visited a site before, whether due to perceived cost or feeling heritage may not be for them, with the opportunity to visit a historic site for free and experience all of the wellbeing benefits that engaging with the historic environment provides.

Here, Craig Fletcher, Head of Learning and Inclusion at Historic Environment Scotland, shares why it’s so important to engage our children and young people with Scotland’s historic heritage.

Scotland’s historic environment is all around us. It connects the physical evidence of human activity such as buildings, landscapes and artefacts with the events and stories associated with them and the records that reveal how it has changed over time.

Wherever you live in Scotland, you have access to the local historic environment. This could be a church or castle, standing stones, a changing high street, objects in your local museum, photographs in your local gallery or archives in your local library, your home or even your school.

Viewed as a rich national learning resource, it can be used to support a wide range of initiatives for children and young people including education, developing skills for life and work and wellbeing. As a source of inspiration, it is an inspiring and varied medium for project work and supporting creativity. Many historic sites sit within rich natural environments providing opportunities for exploration, discovery, outdoor and play based learning.

It provides access to our shared culture and heritage. For example:

• Visiting a historic site lets young people experience the places where events in history really happened.
• Having a go at a traditional skill provides hands-on experience of how buildings were built and are conserved.
• Investigating archives can help in understanding how places and people have changed over time.

But it’s about much more than history. Places, objects, stories and records can provide creative inspiration, unique experiences and multi-sensory environments to support all types of subjects, themes, programmes and outcomes. Getting our children and young people inspired by Scotland’s past helps them learn more about themselves. It’s about making sense of the world and making sense of Scotland.

As the lead organisation for Scotland’s historic environment, we are dedicated to promoting inclusive access and engagement. This includes collaborating with education, youth work, and other organisations that support children and young people. This includes:

• Free learning visits to over 300 historic sites across Scotland.
• Travel grants for schools to support with transport costs.
• Free access to online support resources including Learn, Create and Play, Inspired by the Past, and the Historic Environment Scotland YouTube Learn playlist.
• Free access to digital archives, including scran.ac.uk which contains almost half a million captioned records, images, film clips and sounds relating to national and local culture.

Engaging a broader and more diverse group of young people supports Historic Environment Scotland’s (HES) strategic goal of ‘Heritage for All’ and enhances the social and cultural value of Scotland’s historic environment.

Our new Making Sense of Scotland framework for outreach and learning outlines how we aim to make Scotland’s historic environment a treasured resource for learners of all ages and abilities and build positive relationships with our future visitors, workers, and decision-makers.

HES offers additional direct support to young people and families through admission discounts. Young Scot card holders can get £1 entry to all of our ticketed sites, year-round, at historyawaits.scot

Additionally, Scottish residents have the opportunity to access Historic Scotland winter ticketed properties for free on the first Sunday of each month up until March 2025 – visit historicsundays.scot for tickets.

To find out more about what resources are available, how to book a learning visit, or just to find some inspiration, head to historicenvironment.scot/learn