The Scottish Community Heritage Alliance (SCHA) is a new grassroots initiative led by and for people involved in all aspects of cultural heritage in their communities.

Community heritage is thriving in Scotland, with hundreds (if not thousands) of organisations and individuals working to preserve and share their local heritage – largely on a voluntary basis

SCHA is taking a close look at this very distinctive sector; celebrating its many successes while also seeking to identify and tackle the very real challenges that it faces.

How will SCHA aim to achieve this? In the first instance:

• By listening and talking to people in communities – we want to hear about people’s experiences (positive and/or negative) and their aspirations in relation to community heritage.
• By conducting surveys and analysing the results – we need to gather ‘hard’ data to improve our understanding of the community heritage sector.

This information would potentially allow SCHA:

• To provide information to support community heritage initiatives.
• To provide a voice for communities in relation to their heritage at a national level.

This work began last year with a major survey of the sector – click here to see the results.

Responses to this survey suggested widespread enthusiasm for some sort of ‘national network’ for community heritage, which could serve as a platform for all these actions. SCHA is therefore further exploring this option, including via workshops to be held at 12 venues around Scotland between May and October 2019. Click here to read more and see how to get involved.