Our hopes for the future begin here

Street shot of new heritage hub on Bristo Place, Edinburgh

We want the Heritage Hub to help us to become a truly public-facing organisation, providing a creative, accessible space for everyone to engage with Scotland’s past through education, exhibitions, volunteering, training and events.   

We want to: 

  • Encourage new collaborative research between organisations under one roof and enable the public to explore, understand and promote all aspects of Scotland’s past
  • Provide a physical space to bring people together and encourage community involvement with Scotland’s heritage 
  • Create a new place – THE place – for any of us to use if we have a question about Scotland’s heritage, an event we’d like to see, a story we would like to be told or a contribution to make
  • Enable everyone to visit and work in an environment that is inclusive and welcoming 

We want to bring the values of the Society to life through conserving a building, providing it with a new purpose and leading technology, designing it with accessibility, sustainability and carbon-neutrality built in. These are our ideas but we will only succeed if we create this together with people who will use it and contribute to it.

We want to take action that reflects our commitment to being an inclusive, anti-racist pro-equality and pro-diversity charity. We know that we can only make the Hub as inclusive and relevant as possible by involving our audiences and partners from day one.

We want to foster a diverse community that we can work with as we refurbish the building and make our vision for the Society a reality. 

Imagine a place where you can:

  • Ask the questions about Scotland’s history that you want answered
  • Hear untold stories of Scotland’s past – even difficult and uncomfortable stories
  • Explore how Scotland’s past can help us to tackle our future challenges such as the climate emergency
  • Learn new skills and volunteer to take part in heritage activities

Imagine a place where organisations and people can collaborate and create new opportunities for the public to learn from them and work with them.

This is exactly what we’ll be doing in the coming months – imagining a place where all of this can happen. We’ll share what we learn right here, as we go.