Sounding Out Your Heritage
Best Practice Toolkit
Improving access to informal learning for older people in residential care, day care and sheltered housing settings can have an overwhelmingly positive impact on their health and confidence, and dramatically improve the quality of their lives. This Best Practice Toolkit will help care professionals and heritage educators understand the positive impact of on-going heritage learning, and show them how they can develop programmes of learning activity.
This Best Practice Toolkit shares what we have learned from running Sounding Out Your Heritage (SOYH) – a pilot heritage learning project for the over 60s – and contains contributions from participants, project staff and partners who were involved in the project.
The SOYH Best Practice Toolkit is made up of a number of different components as follows:
> The “core” toolkit
The core toolkit is a basic, step by step guide to running a heritage learning project for over-60s, covering the strategy and planning as well as the day to day coordination. It takes you through from the very beginning – developing the project idea – to the very end – how to sustain the work in the future.
> The “in-focus” & example documents
As you work your way through the core toolkit, you will come across in-focus and example documents. These provide additional guidance on specific aspects of the core toolkit; for example a template from the SOYH project or a more detailed look at a particular aspect of the toolkit i.e. working with the frail elderly.
> The “learning” mini toolkits
There are five learning mini toolkits. They are practical guides for producing specific heritage resources. They are simple and easy to use.