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Scotland's Community Heritage Conversations

A person holding a tablet standing in front of a big screen at an exhibition centre. A blue, white and pink logo reading "Scotland's Community Heritage Conversations" is on both the small tablet screen and the big screen.

This event series brings together volunteers, community groups and heritage professionals to tackle some of the largest challenges facing us as a sector.

Scotland’s Community Heritage Conversations (SCHC) began in November 2020 as a digital re-imagining of Scotland’s Community Heritage Conference..

SCHC was developed to provide an engaging and approachable forum for sharing experiences and opportunities, discussing emerging policy and practice, and supporting one another through new and innovative solutions. Previous Conversations have explored capacity building within grassroots community groups, looked at adapting through digital, discussed exciting new ideas in youth empowerment and examined the connections between heritage and wellbeing.

SCHC is a cross-sector collaboration and is delivered through a partnership of Historic Environment Scotland, Archaeology Scotland, Scottish Council on Archives, Scottish Community Heritage Alliance, Scottish Civic Trust, Scottish Community Tourism (SCOTO) and Heritage Network. This collective effort helps us to represent the wide range of community groups and heritage organisations found across the sector, directly aligning SCHC with Priority 2 in Our Past, Our Future (Empowering resilient and inclusive communities and places) as well as the People and Places priorities identified in HES’s corporate plan, Heritage for All.

A speaker presents a lecture in front of a big screen at an exhibition centre.
A speaker at a Community Heritage Conversations event stands at a lectern. They are smiling widely and holding a notepad.
Attendees at a conference-style event sit in rows of banked seating while a presenter delivers a speech in front of a big screen,

The SCHC annual conference

The SCHC annual conference was launched in 2023 as a day long, hybrid event, comprising a mixture of talks, panel discussions, workshops and One Minute Mayhem – a 60-second soapbox open to all, where attendees have the chance to share news and updates from their own organisations and projects. The sessions all showcase local or national community heritage organisations, sharing examples and case studies that are designed to inspire, encourage connections, and offer practical reflections and actions.

Previous conversations have explored capacity building within grassroots community groups, looked at adapting through digital, discussed exciting new ideas in youth empowerment and examined the connections between heritage and wellbeing.

Stay in the loop

Keep up to date with details of the next SCHC event as soon as they are released:

Follow SCHC on Eventbrite