Churches across the diocese are taking part in the annual Heritage Open Days festival coordinated by the National Trust 6-15 September 2024 when thousands of volunteers across England organise events to celebrate our fantastic history and culture. It's a chance to see hidden places and try out new experiences – all of which are free to explore.
St Oswald’s, Backford and Holy Trinity, Capenhurst share their experience of the festival in this video:
Harriet Roberts, recently appointed as the Director of Communications for the Diocese, commends the opportunity to churches. Here she reflects on her own remarkable journey with the festival and what she learned along the way:
Heritage Open Days (or HODs for short) celebrates its 30th anniversary this September, and I’ve been involved in different ways from the very start. I still get very excited when I see that big, fat, jolly, pink ‘H’ because it’s opened so many doors and opportunities in my personal and professional life. I started out as a volunteer organising events for charities on my doorstep, and ended up working with the HODs team as Media Manager at the offices of the National Trust in London.
Nowadays, there’s an easy searchable and comprehensive directory of events on the HODs website, but back in 1994, before the days of the internet, a preview of HODs events was released to the media a week or so before.
Then I was working as a young radio producer and the list arrived on yards of slippery fax paper. What a gift! With the research all done for you, it was simply a case of plotting a route for the radio van around a series of outside broadcasts around the county. Throughout what was then just one festival weekend, we were out and about meeting great talkers with an abundance of stories, all passionate about their places.
The original Heritage Open Days concept of being able to go behind the scenes, crossing the red cord barriers and going through the doors marked ‘private’ was tantalising, but the festival has become so much more than dusty old buildings and hidden bunkers. HODs has grown to become the UK’s biggest free grass roots celebration of culture and history with over 5000 events every year including performances, hands on activities, talks, sports, rallies, exhibitions, experiences and tours.
I vowed that when I got a job in the ‘real world’, I would become a Heritage Open Days volunteer myself and in 2010 I listed the opening of the administrative headquarters of Child Action Northwest on the HODs website and received my free supply of pink ‘H’ branded signage, balloons and bunting. That iconic Victorian building is a local landmark, well known to those who grew up in the area as the old Blackburn Orphanage. Queues formed outside before the start time of 10am and as it started to rain, we decided to pacify the crowds by opening the doors early and they flooded in. In five hours, a constant flow of 1000 people poured in to the offices, including families searching for records of their relatives, and children (now grown up) who had lived their themselves. Using the archives of our past, we were able to explain that although times have changed, families today have parallel problems which lead to children being in care; abuse, addictions, mental health issues, disabilities etc. It was an opportunity to talk about fostering and generate support for projects like young carers.
The following year, working with Blackburn History Society we managed to persuade 24 other venues to open their doors and run events and received a small grant from the council to make a leaflet.
By 2015, I was working as Blackburn’s Business Improvement District Manager and the Blackburn Heritage Festival was born with 100 events in 50 venues attracting 25,000 people to the town centre as part of a 5 year strategy to change perceptions and drive footfall. With a £60k budget, our attractions included a Victorian helter-skelter, a fashion show in the shopping centre and a fairground carousel. Costumed storytellers were trained to point out the landmarks aboard a fleet of vintage buses offering people a hop off, hop on service around the town as they followed the map around the town.
With stakeholders working together around a shared purpose, I was able to build on a culture of collaboration, linking corporate and community together for other large scale placemaking partnership events. The cherry on the cake was beating 900 other towns and cities to win the Great British High Street of the Year awards an accolade for successful shared vision, which led me on to placemaking work across the UK. The secret … identifying and articulating a shared narrative, what it is that is unique about you, the things that have defined you in the past are the assets which will propel you forward.
In 2016, I joined the HQ team Heritage Open Days, supporting and training coordinators around the country. From humble beginnings, God was with me all the way in my HODs journey and during my career it has been the catalyst for thousands of pounds of National Heritage Lottery funding, television coverage, volunteer recruitment, corporate and council sponsorship, and celebrity endorsement.
Heritage Open Days is a free way of bringing people together from your community who may not usually come through the doors of your church. Perceptions are changed and positive memories made at great events and experiences. Relationships are built around celebrating our shared heritage; the places that have shaped us and the people that have shaped our places: milestones, tragedies and celebrations when communities have come together.
It’s too late for you to plan something for this year’s festival so do take the opportunity to take part as a visitor. Over the fortnight, see what’s going on in your community, step through the open doors into someone else’s space. You might get some ideas for projects and partnerships for your own Heritage Open Days event next year!
Harriet Roberts - Director of Communications