Colin McLean has been Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund in Scotland since establishing its Edinburgh office in 1999.

As he moves on from the post, he looks back on 16 years of investment of National Lottery money.

“It could be £50m a year for the UK’s heritage? What will we spend it on?” I paraphrase slightly, but that was the tenor of discussions in the heritage sector circa 1993, when the National Lottery was announced.

By 2013, the investment by the Heritage Lottery Fund had risen to £425 million for that year alone. With demand always exceeding available funds, so there are no signs of the sector’s thirst for investment abating. So, what has it all achieved?

I don’t think anyone could have predicted the success of the National Lottery, certainly not in terms of its scale. For a heritage sector that had traditionally been the Cinderella service that always bore the brunt of cuts when local authorities were trimming their budgets – and with the knock-on effect that had on independent museums, for example – the National Lottery was a genuine gift. I think it would be fair to say that the Lottery has had more impact on Scotland’s heritage landscape than anything else since the ice age. It has supported over 3,600 projects with a total investment in excess of £730 million.

The range of projects is huge. From many awards of a few thousand pounds to help local groups interpret something of critical interest to a local community, to the largest single award of £21.5m for the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow. The scope and range of these projects is wide too, and sometimes difficult to comprehend taking in not only art and culture but species and landscapes too. But that is also a strength. One of the things I have particularly enjoyed about working at HLF is our refusal to define what heritage is. Simply, it is whatever the prospective applicant wants it to be – anything, tangible or intangible, from the past that someone or some group wishes to celebrate, interpret, save, rescue, restore or whatever. It’s a very inclusive approach and one that I think has served us well.

So what have been the favourites?

With more than 3,600 Scottish projects supported, it is not easy to choose a “best”. But there have certainly been highlights.

When I see the sense of wonder in the eyes of young people when they enter the Natural World galleries in the National Museum in Edinburgh’s Chambers Street, I know that we have helped create something really special. And I’m really looking forward to see the new galleries that will cover science and art, including fashion. I think the acid test for museums is whether they can create displays that draw people into subjects they did know they were interested in, and I personally had that experience first at Kelvingrove, where I was looking at the Armadillo in the display of antique armour and seeing the connection.

Watching and talking to the boat builder in the Boatshed at the new Shetland Museum was also an experience. Realising that the skill embodied in his hands as he worked timber into beautifully shaped oars – and without any use of a template – was as much as part of our heritage as any painting, statue or fine building. It was rewarding too to hear him talk of the young apprentices he had worked with and trained, whose newly learned skills with timber were in high demand in the house building industry. “But they’ll come back to the boats,” he said.

The Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh is now a beautiful place to visit, and an example of where our investment has supported great work – whether new build or sensitive conservation – by some really great architects, from Scotland and from further afield. The aforementioned Riverside Museum in Glasgow is another example of that – ambitious and visionary architecture that allows the collections to sparkle and sing. The Riverside project’s journey was a long one, maybe as long as ten years from the initial discussions about the shortcomings of collections storage at Kelvin Hall, to the final opening of this magical building.

HLF has invested in excess of £40m in Scotland’s historic town centres. Of course it’s not enough and there is always more to be done, but we have helped real change take place, whether in the small village of West Wemyss in Fife, to Glasgow’s Merchant City. These have been really rewarding to be involved in, seeing our investment as part of a wider partnership with everyone pulling together to change a place’s fortunes. These schemes have created a climate that has brought private investment too, given a sense of identity and pride back to places where it had been shaken, and created real and permanent jobs.

We commissioned recent research into the long term impact of our investment, and it has shown some really positive results. People feeling better and more positive about their towns and communities, and experiencing a new pride in their very own special heritage. I think that may be what is at the heart of it all. We all have our own heritage, and we can all be proud to understand it, enjoy it and share it with others.

There is still much to do but I leave knowing what is possible. I will take great pride, albeit from the sidelines, in watching current Heritage Lottery supported projects across Scotland - Lews Castle, the Botanic Cottage, Dunfermline Museum, the V&A Dundee – come to fruition, making a difference to the lives of those they touch and ensuring their treasures are kept safe for generations to come.

ENDS