Heritage Conservation: A Resilient and Engaging Future
Conservation offers a unique lens through which to experience historic collections – revealing the stories objects hold, the lives they represent, and the techniques used to preserve them for future generations. Through Heritage Conservation: A Resilient and Engaging Future, Icon will create more opportunities for people across the UK to engage with conservation and better understand our shared heritage.
Public interest in conservation has never been greater. There is growing curiosity about how heritage is cared for, the skills involved, and the insights conservation offers into the past. The Heritage Fund’s support for this project will help Icon reach wider audiences, creating new routes to understanding and inclusive narratives around the UK’s shared heritage.
Strengthening the Conservation Profession
Heritage Conservation: A Resilient and Engaging Future will help build a stronger, more sustainable conservation sector. The funding will enable Icon to expand its capacity through new roles, develop staff and volunteers, and build a long‑term programme with lasting impact.
The project will equip volunteers to engage wider audiences, while new resources will support them in delivering conservation outreach and engagement across the UK. This investment highlights the vital role of careers in conservation, collections care, and heritage at a time when these skills are critically needed.
Across Icon’s 28 special interest and regional Groups lies a wealth of cultural knowledge, professional experience, and inspiring objects. This project will elevate these narratives, showcasing the breadth of conservation specialisms and their essential contribution to caring for heritage and making it publicly accessible.
Emma Jhita, Icon CEO said:
This support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund is transformative for Icon and will strengthen the vital work of our volunteers and specialist Groups, helping them safeguard the nation’s heritage with expertise and passion. Just as importantly, it will enable us to share the value of conservation with wider audiences - opening doors, creating opportunities, and ensuring that many more people can experience and understand the importance of preserving our cultural heritage for the future.
Supporting Volunteers and Advancing Heritage Skills
Volunteers play a crucial role in the conservation ecosystem. This project will support them to strengthen their skills, build resilience, and confidently communicate the value of conservation to new and wider audiences.
Through Icon’s volunteer‑led Groups, more people will be able to explore heritage, its history, materials, care and treatment, and future preservation.
Public Events and Activities
Icon will deliver an engaging and accessible public programme throughout the project, offering opportunities for people across the UK to connect with conservation and discover the stories behind the objects that shape our national identity.
Engaging with heritage collections has well‑evidenced wellbeing benefits. By strengthening volunteer capacity, expanding reach, and supporting sustainable knowledge‑sharing, the project will help protect these benefits, ensuring that heritage conservation thrives for generations to come.
Thanks to National Lottery players, this project will help bring conservation to life for communities across the UK and support a resilient and inclusive future for the profession.
About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. That’s why as the largest funder for the UK’s heritage we are dedicated to supporting projects that connect people and communities to heritage, as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.
Over the next 10 years, we aim to invest £3.6 billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to make a decisive difference for people, places and communities.
Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLottery #HeritageFund
