The Heritage Lottery Fund, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, has enabled communities to celebrate their past as well as map out a future. Stuart Arnold reports.

WITH millions spent by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), it has been the grandest scale projects which have grabbed the headlines.

Yet it is fair to say that their smaller counterparts have often had the biggest impact on hearts and minds.

Among the fund's aims has been to bring together people in an attempt to mark, preserve and celebrate the heritage of local communities.

One such project is the Wilson Hill Street Neighbourhood project, in Middlesbrough, which gave a number of elderly, working-class people the chance to examine and interpret their history.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many parts of the North-East were affected by a policy of large- scale slum clearance favoured by administrations of the day.

One such area was Wilson Hill Street, in Middlesbrough which, in 1966, saw the demolition of 700 houses with an estimated 2,500 people being moved.

But the community spirit lived on and, united by a common bond, many kept in contact, meeting informally and later setting up a residents' association.

As the years passed they continued to meet and discuss their backgrounds and talk about what life back then meant to them and, as a result, the Wilson Hill Street Neighbourhood Project was created.

The HLF contributed a £14,000 grant enabling members of the group to create an interactive and educational exhibition at Middlesbrough's Dorman Museum, which ran over two months last year.

Photos and old pictures were collected, and taped interviews took place with former residents.

A local artist contributed cartoon drawings and a myriad of other items were donated such as old rent books and pieces of furniture from the time.

Alan Dowson, 66, who helped lead the project and is a former resident, said: "The Lottery afforded us the opportunity to bring all this together and allowed the wider public a chance to see what used to exist in the centre of Middlesbrough.

"More importantly for the 60 or 70 members of the group, it empowered them.

"They felt that what they had to say was of value and their lives were just as important as anyone else's."

Meanwhile, in east Durham, schoolchildren from Seaham Parkside Infant School have been taught about the area's mining heritage by taking part in a project to conserve valuable original colliery banners carried at marches and galas.

The Seaham, Dawdon and Vane Tempest Banner Fund - named after the miners' banners from three now closed pits - received £26,000 from the HLF. Three colliery banners have been created and consecrated in Durham Cathedral.

Work has been ongoing to preserve the original banners and to that end schoolchildren recently visited the studio which is carrying out work on the Vane Tempest Lodge banner.

They gave up part of their half-term holiday to travel to the Textile Conservation Studio at Altrincham, near Manchester.

Dr Ed Mason, of the Seaham Mining Heritage group, said: "We are grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for their support, which includes a grant of £26,000.

"They have made this visit and a whole host of other activities possible."

He added: "The aim is to enhance pride and involvement in Seaham's mining heritage and preserve it for prosperity.

"This generation of children will live to be 100 years old, but none of them have parents who worked in the pits.

"We are depending on them to take the story of our mining heritage well into the future."