If the BBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? has made you curious about your own ancestry, a new project can help you start exploring it.

The Genealogy Story Project is one of a number of initiatives launched by graduates of Limmud’s Young Leadership programme and supported by the cross-communal organisation’s microgrants scheme.

The first session of six on discovering your family heritage is due to take place on Wednesday evening next week at the Moishe House in Kilburn.

Meanwhile, another of the scheme’s beneficiaries, an exhibition on representations of the body in art, entitled “People of the Body”, will be open in central London the weekend after next.

Joe Hyman, Limmud’s director of innovation and engagement, said the grant scheme “came out of the desire to empower people who come to Limmud Festival and generate ideas inspired by their experience there but don’t have a way to enact these outside Festival.”

Genealogy Story Project by graduates of Limmud's Young Leadership scheme

Since the scheme was piloted a couple of years ago, it has enabled 11 projects to go ahead, in London, Manchester and Glasgow. This year the Anglo-Jewish Association has helped Limmud to fund it.

Hyman said one of the attractions of the genealogy project was that it would bring young and old together, in keeping with one of Limmud’s aims, “to create opportunities for intergenerational learning”.

Meanwhile, “People of the Body” will showcase “multifaceted interpretations of the body from ten diverse and talented UK-based artists”, according to the exhibition publicity. “These artists explore and depict the nuances of Jewish embodiment through a variety of contemporary art forms.”

Curated by Ali Simmons and David Hochhauser, whose work will appear in the show, it will have its opening night on August 29 and run until September 1 at 4 Garden Walk in Shoreditch.

Both projects will feature at the Limmud Festival in Birmingham, which runs from December 20 to 25.