“It's been a great experience for me and exposed me to things very outside of my normal day job which has been both enjoyable and rewarding.” 

- Project volunteer

This report shares the interim findings from the Our Heritage programme evaluation. The evaluation established tools and indicators that can be used to assess each of HLF's heritage, people and communities outcomes. The approach involved creating online surveys for project managers, visitors, participants, volunteers and trainees to complete. The researchers, Ecorys, worked with grantees to support them in the evaluation work they carried on their projects and to ensure this work is undertaken in a consistent way as far as possible.

Findings

The responses from the surveys show a range of outcomes have been shown to have been achieved, particularly around the outcomes for people and some key findings include:

• 88% of respondents to the volunteer survey felt that they had developed their skills.
• Visitor respondents showed they had made gains in knowledge, both related to the specific subject matter of the project (97%) and the local area, its heritage and people (77%).
• Visitors reported high levels of enjoyment, resulting in 83% rating 8 or more out of 10 (1 being not enjoyable and 10 being very enjoyable).
• Volunteers also experienced a high level of enjoyment from their involvement in the project, with 92% scoring 8 or more and over half scoring this as 10

Over the next year of the research, in-depth interviews with a sample of projects will be carried out alongside the on-going surveys to continue to build our understanding of the programme and how it is making a difference to heritage, people and communities.