Community Hub Seed Corn Grants awarded in Round 2
Here are the proposals that were awarded Community Hub Seed Corn Grants in the programme's second funding round, to spark new ideas and approaches to community engagement with heritage.
Greater Manchester Youth Network
‘Held in Care’ is a youth-led heritage project exploring what heritage, place and belonging mean to care-experienced young people. Through a series of creative workshops, young people from across Greater Manchester will work together to explore how their shared experiences form part of our collective heritage and how these stories should be recognised, protected and remembered.
The project will culminate in a youth-designed creative resource, which participants will share with care-experienced young people across Greater Manchester to gather wider feedback. Alongside this, we will bring together archive, museum and library partners to begin shaping a longer-term, collaborative approach to preserving and celebrating care-experienced heritage.
We expect the project to increase young people’s confidence, pride and sense of belonging, while helping heritage organisations better understand their role in recognising and safeguarding the histories of care-experienced young people. The learning will directly inform the next phase of GMYN’s Care Repository, ensuring it is designed by young people from the outset.
This funding gives us the time to do something really important: to listen before we build. ‘Held in Care’ isn’t about creating an archive overnight; it’s about giving care-experienced young people the space to decide what their heritage is, what should be remembered, and how it should be held. That learning will shape everything that follows, and we’re delighted to be taking this first step with the support of The National Archives.
Jo Campbell, Head of Business Development
Greater Manchester Youth Network
TRACS (Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland)
We intend to use the grant to pilot a new way of collecting and sharing Scottish Deaf stories in British Sign Language, using the Scottish Deaf Archive as a starting point for lived-experience storytelling. Led by Deaf storyteller Tania Allan in partnership with TRACS and Deaf History Scotland, the project will support up to six Deaf participants to engage with archive material and create short BSL films reflecting their memories, stories and connections to Scottish Deaf heritage.
The project will test practical approaches to filming, translation, accessibility, editing and low-cost equipment, while exploring how storytelling and heritage documentation skills can be developed within the d/Deaf community. The anticipated outcomes are a small collection of BSL story films, shared learning on effective and sustainable methods, a final community event, and a report with recommendations to inform future funding and a potential toolkit for archives working with Deaf communities.
We are absolutely delighted to receive this award, which will make it possible to explore new ways of sharing Scotland’s Deaf heritage through British Sign Language storytelling. This support means we can work directly with Deaf participants to bring archive material to life through personal memories, lived experience and visual storytelling. I hope the project will not only create meaningful new stories, but also help develop a practical model that other archives and Deaf communities can build on in the future.
Joanne Irwin, Storytelling Development Officer
TRACS
Khizra Foundation (Everyday Muslim)
Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative will develop and test a simple digital submission form using existing web infrastructure to test a new community-led method of collecting heritage, that enables communities across the UK to record and submit their own oral histories, photographs and archive materials.
Working with community partners alongside a UK-wide open call to established community organisations, we will pilot the system in real community settings. Participants will record interviews locally and upload them through a structured process supported by consent templates, metadata prompts, and guidance. To make participation accessible, we will produce a practical toolkit and a short video demonstrating how to record interviews, prepare digital files and submit material suitable for long-term preservation.
The project will evaluate whether a distributed, digitally supported collecting model can widen participation, reduce barriers created by travel and volunteer capacity, and generate evidence for future investment in community-led digital archiving.
The opportunity to test new ways of collecting is invaluable to a small organisation like Everyday Muslim. If we are able to collect oral histories and other materials digitally, it would support our vision to increase accessibility and equity in our collecting.
Sadiya Ahmed, Founder
Everyday Muslim
Metroland Cultures
Whose History? is a one-year pilot with No More Exclusions and Red Thread, working with Metroland Cultures to co-design a youth-led, community organising approach to archival research and oral history through the history of the Brent Community Law Centre (1971–2001). Young co-researchers will be paid to explore archive materials, develop interview questions, and conduct pilot oral history interviews with former BCLC workers. The project will produce a guide for the heritage sector while supporting young people and community organisers with new research skills and a deeper connection to Brent’s history of social justice.
We’re thrilled to receive this support to work with a group of young people and community organisers as co-researchers, developing a collaborative approach to archival research and oral history while learning from the work and organising of the Brent Community Law Centre (1971–2001).
Louise Shelley, Interim Director
Metroland Cultures
The Telling Stories Press
This grant will enable young Norwich residents who identify as LGBTQ+ to form a new storytelling collective and work with The Telling Stories Press to publish their own illustrated books. Their publications will respond to the Norwich Castle’s retrospective exhibition of pioneering LGBTQ+ activist and cartoonist David Shenton, and the collective will lead a celebratory book launch in which they’ll present the Castle with a new stories to share with their visitors.
We can’t wait to work with this new storytelling collective in response to David Shenton’s retrospective of joy, protest and the power of coming together to make change. This project feels like passing on the baton to Norwich’s queer young people, and we’ll work together to make new published books which will live on proudly in Norwich Castle after our book launch on the exhibition’s last weekend.
Rosie Feather, Director
The project aims to provide young people—particularly those from underrepresented and marginalised backgrounds—with meaningful, creative engagement in heritage and storytelling. This project aligns strongly with our mission to make history personal, participatory, and relevant to the lives of local audiences.
Jane Pitman, Learning Manager, Norfolk Museums Service
Rose Feather, Director of The Telling Stories Press.
Mike Goddard
Miracle Theatre
Miracle Theatre has been awarded funding from the Spaces, Places and Belonging Community Hub to deliver A Leap of Faith, a community‑led oral history project exploring how people in Cornwall experience, express and share faith today. Working with specialist partners, schools and community groups, we will train young people in oral history interviewing, ethical recording, digital skills and drama‑based confidence building. They will gather stories from older residents and members of diverse faith and non‑faith communities, culminating in a small online exhibition. The project will strengthen young people’s skills, deepen community connections, and help preserve voices that are currently under‑represented in Cornwall’s heritage collections.
We’re delighted to receive this support from the Spaces, Places and Belonging Community Hub. This project gives young people the chance to develop new skills, build meaningful connections across generations, and help capture stories that reflect the diversity of contemporary Cornwall. We’re excited to create a welcoming, community‑led space for shared learning and storytelling.
Sally Crooks, Co-Artistic Director
