We’re pleased to announce that we have awarded just over £80,000 in Small Open Grants to 16 museums and heritage organisations! Thank you to everyone who applied; we had many applications with a large number of impressive submissions. The museums who were awarded grants are:
- American Museum & Gardens, Bath
- Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire
- Brixham Heritage Museum, Devon
- Corfe Castle, Dorset
- Frome Museum, Somerset
- Gillingham Museum, Dorset
- John Wesley’s New Room, Bristol
- Museum of Army Music, Hampshire
- Museum of East Asian Art, Bath
- Museum of East Dorset, Dorset
- Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
- Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
- St Ives Museum, Cornwall
- The Wilson, Gloucestershire
- Topsham Museum, Devon
- The Young Gallery, Wiltshire
The museums got the green light to start their projects earlier in June, so we thought we’d look at how they’ll use their grants to improve and develop their offer for their local communities.
The grant will be seed funding The Wilson’s ‘Our Museum, Our Stories’, a temporary interactive exhibition to consult with their audiences. They will test ideas to help them understand how their communities can connect with the collection and what local people want from the reopening of their museum wing.
Topsham Museum will be using their grant to assess, preserve and catalogue their reserve store of art and artefacts. Each item will be photographed and a curated open access online collection will be developed, with the aim of extending knowledge of local heritage and finding new audiences.
The Museum of East Dorset will be putting their grant behind a freelance consultant who, by working with their Inclusion Group, will produce a comprehensive report which explores the needs and priorities of East Dorset communities. Going beyond data and statistics, the research will uncover what constitutes meaningful support for these diverse groups and how the museum can contribute.
The Young Gallery is a free entry museum with no means to engage and communicate clearly to visitors how the museum is funded. Their grant will allow them to create versatile resources that communicate to visitors the museum’s governance as an independent charity and the importance of donations, hopefully encouraging future donations and fundraising efforts.
The projects will all be wrapping up in January 2025 and we will update you on any exciting developments as they happen. If you’re interested in what grants your museum could benefit from, take a look at our Talking Nature and Capacity Builder grants opening this autumn.