HEF Events

Foresight Day 2025

Foresight Day 2025 took place on 10th June at Roots and Shoots, London.

For 2025, Foresight Day focussed on three main themes:

Implications of devolution for the heritage sector;
Sector collaboration on advocacy/ government relations;
Scoping/ evaluation of the Heritage Sector Resilience Plan (HSRP2).

The objectives of the 2025 Foresight Day were:

To provide HEF members with the opportunity to consider and discuss the potential implications of devolution for the heritage sector and the wider operating environment, and what that might mean for heritage and for the future strategic direction for sector organisations.
To provide HEF members with the opportunity to discuss how the sector should work together on advocacy and government relations particularly in anticipation of the government Spending Review;
To provide HEF members with the opportunity to participate in a workshop gathering sector intelligence to underpin an external impact assessment of the implementation and impact of actions arising from the new Heritage Sector Resilience Plan (HSRP2), including a detailed scoping of the HSRP2’s priorities for collaborative action as well as possible approaches to evaluation towards collective sign-off of the methodology.

Foresight Day 2024

Foresight Day 2024 took place on 18th June at the Wellcome Collection, London.

For 2024, Foresight Day focussed on three main themes:

Heritage-led nature recovery
Local government funding landscape
Sector policy priorities for next Parliament

The objectives of the 2024 Foresight Day were:

To provide HEF members with the opportunity to participate in a workshop that explores the ways in which heritage assets, and the historic environment more broadly, can provide added value to nature recovery projects.
To provide HEF members with the opportunity to identify and discuss the challenges being faced by local authorities in England and discuss how the historic environment sector can prepare for the challenges ahead, as well as identifying related priority actions which should be built into the next version of the HEF Heritage Sector Resilience Plan.
To provide HEF members with the opportunity to discuss sector priorities as we move into a pre-General Election period, and to sift and shortlist some key, common-ground issues and messaging that could later be shaped into historic environment sector policy ‘asks’.

Foresight Day 2023

Foresight Day 2023 took place on 21st June at the Garden Museum, London. The event was preceded by a members’ tour of Lambeth Palace Library, coordinated by HEF member the Church of England.

For 2023, the focus of Foresight Day looked at two main themes:

Manifesto Asks for Heritage
Heritage and Participation.

The objectives of the 2023 Foresight Day were:

To provide HEF Members with the opportunity to discuss sector priorities as we move into a pre-General Election period, and to sift and shortlist some key, common-ground issues that could later be shaped into potential manifesto ‘asks’.
To provide HEF members with a space to consider and discuss the future of participation and inclusion in the sector, including hearing views from an expert guest speaker – Dr Sara Perry, Museum of London Archaeology.

You can download a summary of the event here.

Foresight Day 2022

In 2022, the focus of the Historic Environment Foresight Day was around the delivery of the Heritage Sector Resilience Plan. The event also provided an opportunity Historic Environment Forum (HEF) Members to consider the foresight work currently underway by ICCROM.

The objectives of the 2022 Foresight Day were:

To engage HEF Members with the newly launched Heritage Sector Resilience Plan and capture priority actions to feed into the development of a delivery plan.
Introduce ICCROM’s Foresight initiative.

You can download a summary of the event here.

Foresight Day 2021

Originally organised as part of the programme Heritage 2020, Foresight Days bring together member organisations of the Historic Environment Forum (HEF) to discuss relevant themes for the future of the sector.

In 2021 the Foresight Day focused on Collaboration for Heritage Recovery, building on the work carried out by HEF and Historic England in early 2021 with the production of the Heritage Recovery Plan.

The objectives of the 2021 Foresight Day were:

To complete the action plan for the different sections of the Heritage Recovery Plan, suggesting all necessary collaborative actions to build it, plus consider any new actions which should be added to the recovery plan for each theme.
To discuss collectively three of the topics of the forthcoming Heritage Statement (announced by the Heritage Minister Caroline Dinenage MP at the Alliance’s Heritage Day 2021).

You can download a summary of the event here.