SECURING a job as a grants officer with Heritage Lottery Funding (HLF) has given Newcastle University graduate Naomi Kinghorn the perfect opportunity to indulge her love of history.

Naomi, who graduated from the university at the weekend, has just completed a one-year masters degree in heritage interpretation and education at the university's International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies.

Now she is responsible for giving out money to the region's museums, galleries, heritage and wildlife sites - a role for which her degree course has prepared her particularly well.

Naomi said: "The masters degree is very much geared towards the demands of the workplace, so I have experienced at first hand how carefully heritage sites have to manage their funding, and how important the support of organisations like the HLF is to their success."

During her year-long course, Naomi spent eight weeks on a work placement at Newcastle City Council within the historic environment section.

She worked on the buildings at risk register for the city and researched and wrote a character statement for a conservation area within the city.

Naomi joined the HLF's North-East regional office, in the centre of Newcastle, seven months ago.

By coincidence, one of the first grants she was asked to administer in her new job was for the Flavinus project at the university's Museum of Antiquities.

The project will introduce children from deprived areas of Northumberland to history and the concept of the past using materials from the Museum of Antiquities.