Community-led heritage organisations have a key role to play in the regeneration of our towns, cities and villages and we need to ensure that our heritage trusts, charities and community organisations thrive as sustainable and entrepreneurial social enterprises.

Join us in in the Grade A listed St Columb’s Hall, Derry/Londonderry to explore how we develop organisations that can successfully drive heritage regeneration. We will learn about the business of managing a heritage regeneration project, running a heritage asset as a business, and operating a business as an occupier of a historic site. We will hear about new initiatives from the two leading funders of heritage regeneration and enterprise.

This event is for anyone with a professional interest in heritage-led regeneration including:

• Local authority regeneration, planning and conservation officers
• Members of local business or regeneration partnerships such as Business Improvement Districts
• Staff and volunteers working on community development
• Professional advisors to the regeneration or heritage sector
• Staff and trustees of charities, social enterprises and community groups managing, or planning to manage, historic sites
• Partners in Northern Ireland-wide organisations concerned with heritage, community and economy

After lunch and networking at St Columb’s Hall there will be more opportunities to see heritage regeneration in action in Derry/Londonderry. We will walk the short distance along the City Walls to the former Cathedral School to hear about the plans for its future from representatives of the Cathedral and In Your Space Circus. From there we walk through the historic centre of the city and across the Peace Bridge over the Foyle River. After a tour of the Ebrington Square Heritage Regeneration Site, we end with a talk & refreshments at the Walled City Brewery.