Heritage means very different things to different people. There will be great pride when Glasgow�s transport heritage is displayed in the new Riverside Museum.

Heritage means very different things to different people. There will be great pride when Glasgow's transport heritage is displayed in the new Riverside Museum. For people whose ancestors came from the island of Tiree, heritage is the litany of names which forms their genealogy. Since the first lottery draw in November 1994, £500m has now been distributed in grants by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to projects in Scotland. Landmark projects such as the Riverside Museum (£18m), Kelvingrove (£13m) and the Royal Museum of Scotland (£17m) are balanced by the numerous small awards of a few thousand pounds that have allowed community groups and local museums to make new acquisitions (£9000 will establish a database of nineteenth- century families on Tiree).

A number of ill-considered early projects dampened public enthusiasm for the lottery. The Millennium Dome became the most notorious white elephant, but it was also jeopardised when projects from the heritage stream of money were seen as of little relevance to the public who buy the tickets. Most notable among those was the £12.5m payment to the Churchill family to secure the papers of Sir Winston Churchill for the nation. Lessons were learned from these early mistakes and the largest grants now go to publicly accessible projects.

Heritage has proved a particularly flexible label, whose catch-all nature has allowed the HLF to fund environmental projects such as saving red squirrels in Ayrshire and re-introducing red kites to Aberdeenshire. The general public have benefited from the gradual restoration of 30 historic town centres. Significant buildings have been put to new uses and parks transformed from wasteland to the green lungs envisaged by the philanthropists and municipal planners who created them. Almost none of this could have happened without John Major's vision of providing a new source of funding for "good causes".

The HLF, required to act in the public interest as well as to boost "heritage", cannot expect to disburse its funds without controversy. That is healthy: its major decisions should be informed by public opinion. As the number of people buying lottery tickets is decreasing, however, we are likely to see far fewer large-scale projects. That is disappointing, but should not be cause for despair. In many ways, the HLF has acted as a catalyst, with the prospect of funds prompting community groups to consider embarking on projects which would previously have been dismissed as impossibly expensive. Scotland's heritage has been bolstered by the HLF's treasure trove. It will have been well-spent if, as well as preserving the crumbling fabric of our built environment, it ensures that future generations have a better understanding. Enabling the children of Greenock to learn about the part James Watt played in the Industrial Revolution by exploring the science for themselves is as important in securing our heritage as contributing to buying art and artefacts, and they should never be mutually exclusive.