Project spotlights

Project timeline: October - December 2024 

The Swadhinata Trust is a London based secular Bengali community group that works to promote Bengali history and heritage amongst young people. They have been active for over twenty years, putting on a range of brilliant, community-led activities such as heritage trails, art exhibitions, community workshops, and educational programmes.

However, as a volunteer-based organisation, the Swadhinata Trust lacks the resources to measure and understand its impact on stakeholder groups and communities. This knowledge is vital in the heritage sector, ensuring future planning is supported by evaluative data and developing the capacity to demonstrate impact to potential funding bodies. The Swadhinata Trust briefed qHeritage to deliver resources and models that would enable it to evaluate its impacts.

qHeritage were tasked with helping the Trust address the following questions: 

• What impact are we making? 
• Who are our key beneficiaries? Which groups/communities are we impacting, and which are we not?  
• How do our different activities/events/outputs make different impacts?  
• How has the wider historical context shaped the impact we make?  
• What is the best practice for making a meaningful impact in future? 

Following a competitive application process, two qHeritage teams were put together with students from the School of History and the School Business and Management. They received introductory training on the heritage sector, impact evaluation and client management. The teams collaborated closely to apply the skills and attributes they had developed in their degree programmes, combining knowledge of the politics and priorities of ‘heritage’ with skills around data analysis and communication.  

The qHeritage teams delivered a suite of outputs to support the Swadhinta Trust, including a qualitative data analysis report, website content analysis, an evaluation survey template for future use, and a set of strategic objectives. The Swadhinata Trust team reported:

"It's been really wonderful partnership to engage with qHeritage, it's given us a better understanding of what our needs are and what are what the gaps are. We were greatly benefited by the project deliverable and going forward we need to identify how do we address the issues they have identified in their report”.

Students reported enjoying the experience of working with students from different disciplines and highlighted how it supported their career plans:  

Sumayia Rouf, BA (Hons) History: “The main learning point for me has been how heritage works and what it really means. My understanding of heritage prior to this project had been limited and based on assumptions, but now I see how it works within society."

Matheus Da Silva, BA (Hons) History: “qHeritage has given me the confidence to enter the workforce knowing how to be a valuable member of any team."