Abstract

This report evaluates *Heritage and History in Practice: Enhancing Research Culture through Co-production and Public Participation*, a University of Lancashire project that developed and tested a participatory heritage model in which members of the public became active co-researchers. Twenty community participants took part in a structured programme of workshops focused on family history, heritage interpretation, archival research, digitisation and public engagement, transforming personal photographs, documents, memories and artefacts into public-facing historical outputs. The project produced 23 co-created exhibition boards, 15 historical articles, eight presentations, a Participatory Heritage Toolkit, podcasts and a public exhibition that attracted around 200 people at its launch and an estimated further 250–300 visitors. Evaluation indicates increased co-researcher confidence, skills and engagement with historical research, while demonstrating how participatory heritage can strengthen relationships between universities and communities and provide a transferable model for collaborative public history practice.