Provided jointly by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Wolfson Foundation, the grants will help improve the quality of museum displays, and enhance the experience for visitors.
Spread across England, the funds go to an imaginative array of projects aimed to improve access and understanding of our cultural heritage.
This year’s grants include:
- Egyptian coffins at Ipswich Museum - Improving the display of the museum's important Egyptian collections through the renovation of permanent exhibition space, enabling the Coffin of Lady Tahathor from Thebes to be displayed permanently. (£50k grant)
- Criminals and hangings in Norwich Castle - New displays will focus on Norwich Castle's 500 years as the County jail, together with props and costumes to enable linked events, learning and audience development projects. The project will focus on people: the murderers hanged there; the petty thieves who were transported to Australia to make new lives; the prison governors and staff; and the prison reformers who fought for changes to the system. (£70k grant)
- Extinct animals and climate change at Manchester Museum- A new gallery dedicated to contemporary environmental issues such as climate change, species extinction and environmental sustainability, providing new opportunities for visitors to engage with some of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. (£97k grant)
Culture Minister Margaret Hodge said:
“This year, as before, the DCMS Wolfson Fund is providing support for museums and galleries from all regions of England, backing projects in national institutions, university collections and well-loved local museums and galleries.
I hope today’s awards will help people all over Britain, particularly those with a disability, have improved access to the wonders of the old, new, beautiful and intriguing objects that are housed in England’s museums and galleries. “
Paul Ramsbottom, Executive Secretary of the Wolfson Foundation said:
"The DCMS/Wolfson partnership has become an excellent example of what can be achieved when public funds are matched with private philanthropy. The awards announced today are a testimony to the quality and diversity of the country’s museums and galleries. The Wolfson Foundation is delighted to be associated with these excellent projects."
This is the seventh year of the current DCMS/Wolfson Foundation Museums & Galleries Improvement Fund, which has awarded a total of £24 million to institutions around the country since it was set up in 2002.
Other awards include:
- Your History: Discovery Gallery at the Imperial War Museum, London - Designed to give visitors visible, one-stop access to the full range and depth of the collections and to encourage interaction with them. As part of 'Your History’ the ‘Discovery Gallery' will provide an interactive front of house public search facility, supported by two public reading rooms. This will give visitors an opportunity to access and engage with the collections and provide a 'one-stop-shop' for all visitor enquiries to the collections. (£190k grant)
- A new Post Office for Blists Hill Victorian Town - One of 10 museums administered by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, Blists Hill recreates a typical small town based on settlements that existed throughout the East Shropshire Coalfield at the end of the Victorian era in order to provide insights into local and national issues during this pivotal period in British history. Buildings have been erected on the site, some moved brick by brick from original locations, others recreated using the Museum's extensive archive, and each has been fitted out to show a selection of trades, industries and professions. Many of the buildings are manned by staff in period costume who interpret the contents and demonstrate their functions. The post office will be based on records in the British Postal Museum and Archive of a 1904 post office at Shifnal and will include a stationer's shop, a working telegraph machine, a hands-on sorting office, and a museum illustrating the role of the Post Office in the community. (£126k grant)
- An Internet Gallery at the National Media Museum, Bradford – The gallery aims to capture, record and interpret the ongoing internet phenomenon and explore how it has changed the way we live. An Interactive Foyer element will enable visitors to start their journey of exploration into the internet, as they witness screen pods housed within the 5th floor Internet Gallery 'tumble' out of this space and suspend mid-air in the foyer, with one pod sited in the foyer displaying live information input by visitors during their time in the Gallery.
- A new gallery for Birmingham Museum and Art gallery – The largest single award this year of £300,000 goes to Birmingham Museum and Art gallery. Birmingham History from 1700 – 1830 will be the first gallery to be developed in the planned Birmingham History Galleries wing. Located in Gallery 40 of the Museum and Art, it will ultimately form part of a sequence of five inter-linked galleries telling the story of Birmingham from medieval times to present.
