We are experienced in designing our own projects, as well as starting heritage projects from inception for clients, partnering on projects, and also successfully completing projects that have additional requirements or need extra support.
As a skilled and professional organisation with a team of independent associates, we offer a varied team with the experience to meet your requirements. We deliver projects, activities and support for heritage venues, arts organisations, archives, educational settings and local authorities.
We encourage participation and outreach through projects involving reminiscence, creativity and archive material, engaging a wide range of groups and individuals in creative and cultural activities, including recording people’s life stories and memories.
This is something we have good form with, having worked on a number of projects which have required diagnostic assessment and adjustment including the Dr Blighty project with organisation Nutkhut and the Royal Sussex County Hospital: A People’s History from the 19th to the 21st Century Oral History Project, as well as the Speaking up for Disability project with charity Independent Lives following the closure of the host charity and the departure of the previous project manager.
As an organisation, we are experienced with the training and support of new and existing volunteers and participants, engaging with communities including young people. We undertake the collection of reminiscence based objects and the recording of oral history interviews and we are accomplished in delivering exhibitions and conferences for heritage and cultural projects.
Strike a Light specifically constructs, tailors and moulds its project planning and delivery to specific vulnerable marginalised and hard to reach groups. In the past year, we have worked with elderly Jewish people including Holocaust survivors, children from lone parent families, children of key workers and those with safeguarding needs and older people in a dedicated dementia support home. We have trained young LGBT people to record life stories of being ‘queer’ and taught local authority librarians to offer new reminiscence activities to the community and to young people.
We did this utilising dedicated project methods, outputs and our experience in creating and managing a variety of different groups, and our experience in this aspect serves to enrich our projects. The breadth of connections and insight Strike a Light has gained in 10 years has allowed us to gather an array of creative solutions to reaching participants and audiences.
Having just completed a year-long oral history project with staff in the NHS and the Heritage Lottery funded Shalom Sussex project profiling the contribution of Jewish People in WWI, our current projects include a funded project to create digital versions of our existing oral history training programmes and I Was There, a project celebrating the musical and built heritage of Brighton Dome, involving volunteer training, designing creative resources and engaging with new audiences.
I have had the good fortune to work with Strike a Light – Arts & Heritage on several occasions. They are a delightful organisation to work with: clear communicators with all members of the community organisations with whom they work so well. Strike a Light bring passion and imagination to their work plus a guaranteed professional outcome !
Pippa Smith
Former Head of Education Brighton Festival and Dome