I’ve always been interested in local history, from primary school projects to my university dissertation and beyond. I’m not alone in this, family history is very popular thanks in part to shows like Who Do You Think You Are?, and so too are related areas like house histories, one place studies and local history. A report published in May 2025 ‘There’s a lot of history here.’ Local history, local heritage and local pride, in Coventry and across the UK explored the role of local history and heritage in shaping how people feel about where they live. The findings showed a deep connection between people, place and local history, which was particularly strongly associated with physical sites such as buildings and landmarks
All of this means that lots of people are interested in local history and heritage, which makes it a great angle for talking about your project, but where do you start if it doesn’t have an immediately obvious local history focus?
Local history for environmental charities and projects
One of the threads that runs through the Britain Talks Climate and Nature report, published in September 2025, is the need to communicate on climate and nature through a local lens. Locally rooted stories can include elements of history and heritage and it’s worth seeking these out to help add depth and relevance to your communications.
As part of a wider strategy to broaden appeal, I integrated local history into a number of website series for CPRE Bedfordshire. The starting point was a feature published back in 2020 called Walking Through History which took readers from prehistory to the twenty first century through twelve places that shone a light on local and national history. Each place was accompanied by suggestions for walks and the piece proved very popular with readers including families home schooling during the pandemic lockdowns. Building on this idea, I then developed the Discover series which was geographically focused on clusters of villages, helping people to learn more about the history and landscape of a particular area, as well as giving them tips for getting out and exploring it. More thematically, the Bedfordshire A-Z series covered places, landscapes and history, with each post including tips for walks and places to visit. The use of regular features helped create a sizeable archive of posts that could be searched by anyone interested in exploring Bedfordshire, either from their armchair or on foot.
A second way of using local history opened up when the charity began working more closely with local action groups to help them achieve their aims. Some of their campaigns were focused on sites with long histories and I was able to write features that showed how one small patch of land can help communities tell the story of their whole area, shedding light on how people have lived there over the centuries.
Making it personal
Sometimes a project might come with an obvious connection to local history. Developing a set of social media content themes for a group of church bell-ringers looking to recruit new members quickly identified the history of the bells and bell-ringing in the area as a possible topic. Comments on Facebook posts for a history talk and display revealed that the local community was broadly positive about the sound of the bells and associated it with either living within hearing distance or life events such as baptisms and weddings. This sense of connection to the sound meant that I was able to suggest a more personal and family history related strand, emphasising ringing for life events, national celebrations, and commemorations such as Remembrance Sunday.
This shows the worth of digging below the surface. Finding the places where your project connects with people’s own family histories is a great way of bringing an added human dimension to your communications.
Ways I can help you
If you’re interested in developing a local history angle as part of your project communications I can help you by:
- Suggesting ways in to local history for your project
- Researching and writing features for your website, newsletter or other publications
- Identifying sources of information and how to get started with your own research
- Developing messages that will appeal to people interested in local or family history
- Finding out where this audience is in your area and how to reach them (e.g. Facebook groups, societies, regular events)
Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss a project.
(For the curious, my university dissertation was Sunday Schools and Society: Bradford 1780-1870. Like many students, I chose to focus on a piece of local history so that I could make use of reference libraries and archives during the summer break. The topic picked up a number of themes that I was interested in, including religious nonconformity, education, working conditions in the mills and community life.)
Shelly Dennison 
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