The Light Our Heritage Team are a small group of people who came together as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. With people not allowed to leave their homes and experience the beauty and grandeur of heritage sites that this country has to offer, the team knew that these venues would not be able to receive guests in their usual way. 

Realising this, and experiencing it ourselves, we decided to use our expertise from working in the event side of the entertainment industry, who like many others, ran into difficult times with the current situation and the demise of live events. 

Our research showed that the vast majority of properties are trust owned and rely on tourism and events revenue not only for their conservation but for their upkeep and employment of staff: groundskeepers, caterers, gardeners, maintenance, administrators and housekeeping to name but a few. With the outlook not looking good for the summer months, we set about looking at ways help get the “winter” season up and running to raise revenue in this sector and highlight the challenges that many of the UK’s fantastic heritage properties are facing. Many of these institutions rely on the public visiting them to make their revenue and remain open for the nation to see and enjoy. It is these institutions that form part of our national identity and heritage, and just like many other sectors, these institutions need our help more than ever.  

Keeping in touch with each other via video chats (the new normal, apparently) we called on our experience from within our industry to create Light Our Heritage. With the help and support of several designers and production managers who have been involved with these types of events before, we were able to bring this idea to life. This was also around the time that the ‘light it blue’ campaign for the NHS was gathering momentum, and so we saw this as a way of looking into the heritage sector and seeing how they were being affected by the lack of tourism due to restricted opening and lockdown.  

By putting various materials and our website together, we hope that many places will look to put on a form of winter light event to highlight their property to a wider audience. We aimed this at properties with little or no experience in this, by offering guidance, support and being able to put them in touch with the relevant professionals, all in one place. We hope the larger established events will join in and register their event with us also, so that Light Our Heritage can help direct the public to find exciting heritage sites to visit this winter.  

Thank you for reading,

The Light Our Heritage Team.