9125 Heritage Connectors and Heritage Buddies Evaluation - AWARD

Heritage Connectors (9105) and Heritage Buddies (9104) are innovative pilot projects funded by Historic England's Commissions to test and trial two approaches to delivering social prescribing and wellbeing through heritage in local settings. The "Connectors" and "Buddies" models are ways of implementing the "whole-community approach to social prescribing", as adopted by the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) . They are evidenced by the Health Connections Mendip service, part of Frome Medical Practice (for the "Connectors") and by Nottingham Community and Voluntary Service and Natural England (for the "Buddies") but modified and adapted for local heritage and historic environment provision.

Historic England would like to commission a research project to evaluate the pilot projects. The aim of the evaluation is to understand how the projects were implemented, whether they achieved their objectives and their impact on participants (referees) and stakeholders (partners, trainees). The evaluation should also capture the potential for further implementation of these models in other localities, including nationally. The data from this evaluation project will also be used to inform Historic England's position on investing in shared investment fund or similar initiative in late 2023 to promote such social prescribing models on a larger scale in partnership with other arm-length bodies and organisations.