What do you think of when you hear the word “heritage”?  Maybe it makes you think of boring history lessons at school, or being dragged round some dusty museum by your parents on a wet Sunday afternoon?

Well, the National Youth Theatre’s heritage-based outreach projects are showing young people that learning about heritage can be enjoyable and surprising, and that they can find out stuff that is really relevant to their everyday lives.  Above all, learning about heritage with the NYT is fun!

The name of the ID1000 project comes from thinking about our identity today in terms of a thousand years of our heritage.  In particular, we wanted to explore stories about migration and all the different people who have travelled to and from the British Isles over the past thousand years.  So the young people on the project got the chance to uncover some of the hidden histories of their local area, and get in touch in imaginative ways with the stories of people who have lived and died there.  They were making heritage come alive and seeing how what’s happened in the past is relevant to us today.

Use the links on the left to find out more about the stories we uncovered in Kent, Tower Hamlets, Brierley Hill and Cumbria.

To visit the National Portrait Gallery please click here

To visit the British Library please click here