Cite this as: Lewis, C., Siriwardena, N., Laparidou, D., Pattinson, J., Sima, C., Scott, A., Hughes, H. and Akanuwe, J. 2026 "It makes me feel happy that we did it and what came out of it": Recent research into the association of heritage participation with wellbeing, Internet Archaeology 73. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.73.6
This paper explores insights from recent Historic England-funded research (Lewis et al. 2022; Pattinson et al. 2023) into how and why heritage participation is associated with wellbeing. The research involved thematic analyses of in-depth post-participation interviews with 35 adults who had volunteered on activities funded to support heritage sites previously deemed to be 'at risk'. This paper reviews the six overarching key themes identified as characterising the wellbeing associations in volunteers' responses and then considers in more detail the role of heritagespecifically in wellbeing. Analysis shows that activities funded to benefit heritage can also benefit wellbeing, and indicates that the aspects of wellbeing most often or strongly associated with heritage are those relating to purpose, being, knowledge gain, sharing, psychological benefit and self-actualisation; and that the 'USP' of heritage for wellbeing appears to lie in the force-multiplying interaction of eight cross-cutting characteristics (temporality, discovery, authenticity, continuity, rescue, nostalgia, transformation and legacy) present in the time-focussed eco-system of heritage volunteering.
Corresponding author: Carenza Lewis
[email protected]
University of Lincoln 
Niro Siriwardena
[email protected]
University of Lincoln
Despina Laparidou
[email protected]
University of Lincoln
Julie Pattinson
[email protected]
University of Lincoln
Claudia Sima
[email protected]
University of Lincoln
Anna Scott
[email protected]
University of Lincoln
Heather Hughes
[email protected]
University of Lincoln
Joseph Akanuwe
[email protected]
University of Lincoln
Figure 1: Map of England showing the location of HAR projects included in the HARAW research which included three landscape projects (coloured to indicate area covered) and seven site-based projects (bold text).
Figure 2: The heritage wellbeing cycle, articulating how heritage volunteering which is associated with wellbeing increases heritage valuation which in turn impacts on motivation to volunteer
Figure 3: Model showing the relationship between the eight heritage-specific characteristics of heritage at risk volunteering (bottom) which are enabled by inputs and opportunities provided by activities to deliver wellbeing outcomes in 19 categories grouped into six themes
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