Proud Places is Heritage of London Trust’s youth engagement programme, inspiring young people to discover London’s heritage through hands-on learning, creative workshops and behind-the-scenes access to historic places.
Since 2024, more than 700 young people from local primary schools, colleges, Alternative Provisions, youth groups and young refugee groups, have taken part in the Lord Byron restoration project through Proud Places with thanks to the Jones Day Foundation.
Proud Places take young people on a journey through the conservation process from start to finish, giving them a unique insight into how London’s heritage is cared for. During the Lord Byron project, participants visited the statue before conservation to see its neglected condition, met conservators at PAYE Conservation’s stonemasonry yard to witness restoration work first-hand, and explored the statue in its new home following its relocation.
Construction students also designed their own landscape proposals for the site, considering how the restored monument could be presented and enjoyed by the public. By experiencing every stage of the project, participants gained a deeper understanding of the specialist skills involved in conserving historic monuments and the importance of protecting London’s heritage for future generations.
In 2026, through a project instigated and managed by the Byron Society and with the support of Heritage of London Trust, the Byron memorial statue was restored and moved back into the park, after spending decades marooned on a traffic island on Park Lane, inaccessible to the public behind barriers and fast-moving traffic. The restoration not only returned the statue to public view but also created opportunities for young people to engage with its history.
Learning about Lord Byron allowed participants to explore the poet’s remarkable life, his literary achievements and his influence as one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement.
Seeing how communities and conservation specialists worked together to restore the statue encouraged participants to think about the value of protecting public art and inspired their own creative endeavours.
Proud Places tailored each session to every group’s specific needs, and facilitated a range of creative workshops, including poems, paintings, landscape designs, sketches and clay sculptures inspired by the statue.
Through heritage, creativity and direct engagement with conservation, the Lord Byron project encouraged hundreds of young people to see London’s public art in a new way. From writing poetry to creating sculptures and paintings, participants developed new skills while discovering the stories behind one of the city’s historic monuments.
Organising a visit to the Lord Byron Statue with Proud Places
Our experienced Proud Places team offers interactive educational visits to the Lord Byron statue and creative workshops for young people aged 11 to 19. If you are from one of the below organisations please get in touch with us at info@heritageoflondon.org, and we will be pleased to discuss with you.
- State primary and secondary schools
- Youth groups
- Organisations supporting young refugees and migrants
- Alternative Provisions
- SEND schools
Poet for Places
Poet for Places is a Heritage of London Trust programme offering a young non-professional writer the chance to engage with London’s heritage and stories. The 2024 Poet for Places, Kira Nelson, wrote Vyronas, a poem about Lord Byron and partnered with Proud Places to deliver poetry workshops. In these workshops, students produced their own Romantic-inspired poems after analysing Byron’s poem ‘When We Two Parted’ and entered them into a poetry competition. Kira selected the winning poems, which you can see below.
Love’s gluttonous grasp, greedy for more,
The lack of his benevolence,
Which left me to reminisce over thee and rue thee,
Like an untold story trembling, waiting to be told.
What I thought was the embodiment of Christ himself,
His fluorescent, pearly, and radiant arch,
Love foretelling and flashing through the iris,
How heart thy hollow heart was.
All in which left me broken and burdened in heart,
The dramatic dance in which thee moved,
Only to be left in an atmosphere altered,
A cold climate of cold change.
Yet still thy shadow stays with me,
A silent, but projecting star in memory’s dim sky,
Though love lay lost in the abyss,
Its fading flame refuses to die.
So shalt thou wander down the darkest paths,
And may our paths never meet again.
And when tomorrow comes
Know that when you called I came
And heard the beat of drum
Against my heavy shame
And in the days past
Your jagged love stays
And the little time your moments last
Fleeting amongst my days
Your mortal body lies
Our silent oath broken
And your love for me dies
Nver to be spoken
And the blossoms in your skeleton
The stars our witness
You were my addictive medicine
To my lovely sickness
And without you I weep
Staying immortally ethereal while forever alone
My soul I will keep
And this fractured affection
That you loved me with too
It’s now my progression
I burn for you.
