Heritage Link Update 132 Heritage Link Update is sent to members and supporters of Heritage Link as a way of sharing information of relevance to the historic environment sector. Please feel free to circulate copies within your organisation and to forward copies to anyone else who might be interested. 22nd February 2008 Contents Is heritage in the Cultural Offer? What heritage can Offer £25m Find Your Talent scheme and Youth Culture Trust to support the Cultural Offer Act quickly to secure heritage in regional Cultural Offer! Resources for the Heritage Protection Review: latest 'assurances' Heritage Counts 2008: are you monitoring or recording the impacts of climate change? Informal Adult Learning - Shaping the Way Ahead: DIUS consultation to 15th May How to care for places and people: IHBC consultation on HE skills to 2nd May Radical restructuring for MLA Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) rings alarm bells over planning powers Heritage Link regional audit: volunteer needed Powers to create parish councils confirmed Launch of National Heritage Science Strategy Tenders invited for research on impacts of regeneration EH cathedral grants prompt Westminster debate SPAB Faith in Maintenance at Manchester Jewish Museum, 13th July Building Faith in our Future: 8th bulletin Hill Farm Allowance 2008 excludes Moorland and Common Land New Board of Philanthropists Learning from past conflicts: MLA funding for Phase 2 Victoria County History award to history of deaf people National search for Community Champions and Heritage Heroes Victorian Society dines out at the Albert Memorial PEOPLE New trustees for HLF and NHMF Heritage Lottery Fund/ National Heritage Memorial Fund: Vacancies RIBA Honorary Fellowships EVENTS SITUATIONS VACANT Notes and subscriptions Is heritage in the Cultural Offer? The Department for Children, Schools and Families formally announced the Cultural Offer that Culture Minister Margaret Hodge alluded to at Heritage Day in December. Each child will have access to 'at least five hours of high-quality culture per week’. But confusion reigned as to whether this joint DCSF and DCMS initiative really included heritage. Mention of heritage was peripheral at best. Visits to historic sites were noted in some media coverage but not for example in the no. 10 press release or our Secretary of State's interview on the Today programme on 13th February. How the Cultural Offer became the Find your Talent scheme on the DCMS website added to bewilderment. Then there is the new Youth Culture Trust taking over Creative Partnerships. Who is championing heritage here? Is it The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) or English Heritage? How does the new Cultural Offer relate to the Learning Outside the Classroom Manifesto or the DCMS scheme Engaging Places due to launch later this year to promote built environment as a learning resource? These are all welcome and exciting initiatives connecting heritage and learning. The details may not be clear but what is clear is the golden opportunity to offer the expertise that the heritage sector already has and to maximise the enormous potential of our heritage as a cultural experience. Back What heritage can Offer The Cultural Offer is an opportunity to demonstrate the historic environment is as much part of the nation's culture as the visual and performing arts. An enormous amount of educational work goes on at historic sites - historic houses, castles, cathedrals - some 2.5 million school visits a year. To enlarge on what heritage can contribute to the scheme, Heritage Link Chairman Anthea Case wrote to Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. 'Historic sites are only part of the cultural offer. It is important,' she said, 'that teachers make use of their local environments and the widely accessible resources