Hope Streets

11-25 year olds from diverse backgrounds were encouraged to see local heritage as theirs to own, and to work with heritage organisations, artists and experts to interrogate, agitate and ‘re-present’ what they found - producing their own ‘Festivals of Hope’.

This five-year programme was designed to initiate and embed organisational change in how North West England’s museum and heritage sector connects and engages with young people and the youth sector. It was led by Curious Minds in consortium with Museum Development North West and Youth Focus North West, and was made possible thanks to a grant from National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Kick the Dust programme.

A strategic model for organisational change

We set out to model how youth work practices could be embedded in heritage spaces: making young people feel welcome when they visit outside of school, supporting young people to lead their own projects and embedding youth voice in organisational planning and governance. 

Hope Streets spanned the North West of England. Five museum and heritage service ‘hubs’ acted as the locus of activity, but with the aspiration that the good practice would spread like spokes on a wheel, across all five sub-regions of the North West. The ambition was to positively change the culture within these five hubs, so that young people became a consideration in strategic planning - no longer siloed as the sole responsibility of Education or Learning teams. Instead, a warm welcome for young people should become ‘business as usual’ across each service and its staff.

A Festival of Hope

The Festival of Hope was produced by 40 young individuals through the Summer of 2020, working with our 5 partner museums and supported by Blaze Arts – a charity at the forefront of youth-led arts practice. 

Amidst the international crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic - with museums and cultural organisations forced to close their doors -  these imaginative young people flexed and adapted their planning, to take the Festival online, ensuring hope was found and new light was cast on interpretations of heritage.

Visit the Festival Of Hope website

Such resilience and creativity led to the Festival being named a finalist in the Best Arts Project category of the prestigious Hearts for the Arts Awards 2021.

What Hope Streets achieved for the Sector

Curious Minds commissioned an independent evaluator to consider how Hope Streets drove organisational change towards best practice in youth engagement over the programmes’ five-year lifespan. This post-project evaluation concluded that, at each of the partner hubs:

• There is more youth engagement, which is wider and deeper.
• It is becoming routine for young people to contribute to decision-making.
• The workforce at the hubs has a greater youth focus, with more employees, trainees and volunteers under the age of 25.
• Young people appear in policies and procedures.
• Strategic documents and plans reflect an increased and ambitious commitment to working with young people.
• The hub museums have become experts in youth engagement, making them a resource for the sector.

Considering workforce statistics at the hubs before and after the Hope Streets programme, we were able to identify measurable changes which reflected this change in focus, including:

• 260% increase in youth participation focused roles

• 300% increase in Trustees under the age of 25

• 133% increase in trainees, interns and apprentices under the age of 25

the Hope Street project, working with young people in general, has really influenced [our] capital plans… it really is a whole building approach.

Museum Senior Leadership Team member

Sharing learning: A legacy of hope

From many of the practical learning points we derived from the Hope Streets project, we were able to create short visual summaries with key takeaways and actionable advice. These are available at the buttons below – free resources for organisations that are keen to sustainably embed more youth focus and participation.

Transforming how museums engage with young people

Weaving youth participation into the fabric of museums

We also used insights from this and other youth participation research, such as Curious Citizens, to develop a groundbreaking new training course.

I’m A Teenager, Get Me Into There is designed to enable people working in front of house or public-facing roles to understand the teenage experience and feel more confident in their interactions with young people. It is available as a content rich 1-day course, led by our expert trainers, or in short form as a free-to-access online programme.

Curious to know more?

Whether you work in a school, the creative sector or elsewhere, if you’re keen to discuss how Curious Minds can help you open doors to more and better arts and culture experiences for young people, we’d love to hear from you!

You can email us or get in touch using the contact details below.