National Lottery Heritage Fund kick starts our 150th anniversary

It's all go here at Together Trust HQ as we prepare to celebrate our 150th anniversary! Thanks to a generous grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Together Trust has been awarded an astounding £99,200 to make 2020 a memorable year in which we celebrate our past, present and future with 'The Ever Open Door - 150 years of Together Trust' project.

Together Trust was fortunate to have previously been awarded a National Lottery Heritage grant for the 'Young Roots - Deep Pockets and Dirty Faces' project back in 2015. This time the funding will enable the Trust to commission more events and workshops led by and tailored to the young people whom the Trust currently supports and has supported in the past, as well as the wider community. Through the use of the charity's archives young people will respond to our vast and varied history to reinterpret the stories of individuals previously in the charity's care through multimedia presentations which will be displayed at exhibitions and via a digital timeline. The fund will also allow us to digitise more of the archive's treasures (more details to follow in the coming months), and provide a history education resource for our schools to feed into the curriculum.

Each strand of the 150th project aims to provide young people with experiences to enhance their confidence, skills, interests and employability, whilst encouraging engagement with our long heritage and collections. With this in mind, as part of our memory collecting project which hopes to capture the voices of our care leavers, young people currently supported by the Trust will benefit from training to enable them to take the lead and carry out oral history interviews. From communication, research and presenting skills to digital skills, the National Lottery Heritage Fund will make a lasting impact on the lives of so many inspirational young people.