Breaking Barriers

Breaking Barriers is a two-year community engagement/impact project which builds on the current virtual and interactive Eco-Museum of Scottish Mining Landscapes (https://www.mining-landscapes.org/). It will deliver a series of intergenerational activities to promote wider public engagement with mining heritage beyond the familial and occupational connections to coal.

The virtual and interactive Eco-Museum of Scottish Mining Landscape focuses on the Scottish Midland coalfield, spanning an area from Fife to Ayrshire. The project was launched in April 2024 and opened it metaphorical ‘doors’ in August. Key to the Museum’s collection is a series of both community-designed and -curated walking and cycling routes that narrate the history of local coal mining through the medium of landscape, and ‘destination blogspots’ that highlight individual feature or building related to the local mining industry and the associated industrial heritage that tell a story but where the landscape does not permit a viable walking/cycling route. This project will expand and develop the current 'landscapes journeys' collection, responding to community demand for extended geographical reach across the former Scottish coalfields.

Underpinning these activities is the development of a suite of community created 'how to' toolkits that break down barriers related to digital confidence and accessibility (including physical and cognitive impairment). The aim is both to empower and equip communities with the confidence and skills to interpret, map and record their own mining heritage digitally through a local place making lens, and to save the disappearing link between former colliery sites and memory through the medium of walking and cycling routes. Further, these toolkits provide the museum with long term sustainability by creating independent community curators.