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The Maritime Heritage Trust

Your Vessel; Their Future

How to engage young people with their maritime heritage

Why is it important to engage young people?
  • Young people can benefit from these visits through learning more of their local history, developing new skills and learning about job opportunities.
  • By engaging with young people vessels can reach a wider audience and inspire future generations to support their local heritage vessel.

Some vessels and museums have excellent youth and community programmes and MHT is keen to develop user friendly advice on how to extend this across the sector.

During August and September 2025, three youth engagement activity days were run with Steamship Shieldhall in Southampton and one with the Helen II in Conwy.

A donation from The Lois Cumbers Charitable Foundation enabled us to fund the engagement of Keystone Heritage, a consultancy specialising in working with schools and young people, to organise those visits and prepare this report.

View Full Report  (8mb PDF)>>

Contents include:

  • Best practice in organising a youth project for your vessel
  • How to organise a school visit and how to contact schools
  • Risk Assessments and Safeguarding
  • School/youth group activity check lists
  • Public engagement
  • Case studies summary - The Steamship Shieldhall, Southampton; The Helen II, Conwy
  • Case studies summary - The Steamship Shieldhall, Southampton; The Helen II, Conwy
  • Case studies summary - The Steamship Shieldhall, Southampton; The Helen II, Conwy
  • Summary of lessons learned and Recommendations