Current and past projects

Grants awarded 2025

Aunt Nell

Aunt Nell Ltd is an independent podcast production company that will use their engagement grant to delve into the archive of Press for Change, which started fighting for trans rights in the 1990s, and commission four trans sound artists.

Tash Walker, Director of Aunt Nell Ltd, says: “We’re thrilled to receive this grant to support us in making a unique sound installation about UK transgender history. The work will connect us all to UK trans history, through the power of sound and memory, bringing a pivotal archive out into the open.”

Equal Arts

The engagement grant will enable the team at Equal Arts to run a new project called ‘Creative Newcastle and the Crawhalls.’ The team will be working with people living with dementia and carers to co-develop a set of dementia-friendly reading resources inspired by the Crawhall collection at Newcastle City Library.

Douglas Hunter, CEO for Equal Arts, says: “People living with dementia often stop reading because conventional books are too complex in terms of content and narrative, but archival documents such as letters, when curated in the right way, can offer a satisfying reading experience which stimulates curiosity and imagination without cognitive overload.  We are grateful to The National Archives for enabling this work, which forms part of our wider Reading with Dementia programme with Newcastle Libraries, supported by Arts Council England.”

Flintham Museum

The Flintham Museum will be launching a project based on the unsold contents of Whites Stores in Flintham, Nottinghamshire, which were discovered in 1990. This includes hundreds of documents and items about food rationing from 1940-1954. Using documents as a starting point, the project will look at how Flintham residents ate during difficult times. Activities based on food during three time periods (1940-1954, 2020, and in the future) will be organised for all age groups.

Firstly, ration books will be distributed to 250 households and residents will be invited to devise recipes using foods available during and just after World War Two. Secondly, memories of shopping and eating during the 2020 Covid lockdown will be captured for future generations to discover. Finally, people will be invited to think about what they would eat in the event of a future conflict by partaking in local walks led by a professional forager. Through these walks, unexpected foods in and around the village will be found, gathered and turned into edible items for people to take home and eat. The project will end with a community picnic when locally made food reflecting the three time periods will be prepared and shared.

Susan Clayton, the museum’s volunteer curator, says: “Acquiring, preparing and eating food is something we all do every day but we rarely think about how previous generations coped when food was scarce or actively consider what we would do if there was a future conflict which affected food supplies. We reckon this project will encourage us to look backwards and forwards and think differently about an everyday activity.”

Museum of Youth Culture

Camden Calling is an exciting new partnership between the Museum of Youth Culture, Camden Local Studies & Archives Centre and London Borough of Camden. Welcoming two major milestones, Museum of Youth Culture opening its first permanent space in Camden and the borough celebrating its 60th birthday, Camden Calling will invite an artist into the archives to uncover untold stories with the local community. Alongside a series of community archiving events, the artist will co-produce a piece for the public realm.

Jon Swinstead, Founder for Camden Calling, says: “as we prepare to open the world’s first Museum of Youth Culture in Camden, it is vital that our archive speaks to the local community. This project enables us to champion Camden’s rich history and start to directly engage the community in how they want their stories to be told.”

Wigan Council

Archives: Wigan & Leigh will offer seven to eleven year olds in their local area a chance to engage with archival collections through digital workshops. This project, delivered in partnership with education company Computer Xplorers, will be comprised of eight sessions across the 2025 Summer holidays.

Councillor Chris Ready, cabinet portfolio holder for communities at Wigan Council, says: “this successful funding bid will help us to bring our heritage to life for local children this summer holidays. As part of our popular holiday activities, young people will have the opportunity to explore our archive collections and build their skills in stop motion animation, video making and more.”

Mulberry Bush Organisation

Mulberry Bush Organisation will use their grant to roll out archives-based workshops to different settings within the care sector. The workshops, co-produced alongside care-experienced adults, will be informed by archival examples of care records which will form the basis for redacted poetry and creative writing.

Debra Doggett, Senior Archivist, says: “We are thrilled to receive this Engagement Grant from The National Archives. This will help us to highlight the voices of care-experienced adults and tell us more about what it’s like to be at the receiving end of the recordkeeping process.”

Cornwall Council

‘We are Cornwall’s communities’ is a collaborative project between Kresen Kernow, Cornwall’s archive centre and disAbility Cornwall on behalf of Cornwall Lived Experience Partnership (CLEP). The aim of the project is to work with community members to co-curate an exhibition at Kresen Kernow for the summer of 2025. The exhibition will explore what members of CLEP feel is important about Cornwall’s past and will involve archive stories that can inform a positive and inclusive future in Cornwall.

Alice Howard, Interpretation and Participation Lead, says: “We are really excited that this grant enables us to work with disAbility Cornwall on this exciting exhibition and offer paid opportunities to community members to get involved in archive curation”.

West Yorkshire Archive Service

West Yorkshire Archive Service will work with the South Asian community in Wakefield to share, promote and better understand local collections. The funding will enable them to reach out to hyperlocal audiences around West Yorkshire History Centre in Wakefield and support them to explore stories within the archive’s collections relating to their unique histories within Wakefield. They will also celebrate South Asian History Month (SAHM) in July and August 2025 with a number of outreach activities and creative opportunities to explore archive collections.

Councillor Melanie Jones, Chair West Yorkshire Joint Services Committee, says: “This project will allow us to explore new ways of joint working and of co-curating with our local communities to develop a deeper understanding of our collections and the community stories embedded within them. Archives are the keepers of stories. By sharing and preserving the stories of Wakefield’s South Asian community, we can help make existing collections more accessible to diverse communities, helping to enrich our heritage and make it more representative of the people of Wakefield.”

Oxfordshire Health Archives

The Oxford Health Charity, the Oxford Health Arts Partnership and Oxfordshire Health Archives will mark the bicentenary of the Warneford Hospital in 2026 with their project, ‘Warneford 200’. The engagement grant will fund a series of creative workshops for users of mental health services and members of the local community to be held in Oxford, Banbury, Woodstock, Didcot and Abingdon.

During the workshops, which will be led by an artist from the Oxford Health Arts Partnership, participants will be asked to respond creatively to stories about the Warneford over the past 200 years, and to materials from the archives. Their artwork or creative writing will be included in the Warneford 200 exhibition, planned to tour Oxfordshire during 2026.

Dr Karl Marlowe, Chief Medical Officer, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, says: “We are immensely grateful to The National Archives for supporting this project. This will bring the history of the Warneford Hospital to contemporary life and highlight the importance of the creative therapeutic link to mental health.”

OHA WP 57. An engraving of the front of the Warneford Hospital (then known as the Oxford Lunatic Asylum) published by J. Fisher in 1824; this became the back of the hospital in 1877.

Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse

This project will explore the little-known history of Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse’s site during 1945, focusing particularly on local lived experience, to coincide with the anniversary year of VE and VJ Days. The research that volunteers will undertake, with expert training from the Norfolk Record Office (NRO), will directly inform two public engagement events, highlighting the impact of this specific moment in history and social changes for Norfolk in the period.

The project will provide an invaluable opportunity for volunteer and staff training through NRO’s expertise and facilitate the creation of a robust research pack for ongoing use and extended project legacy – including up to four biographical profiles, shared through costumed interpretation to bring local history to life.

Fiona Ashley, Events Officer, says: “The project aims to humanise the past and offer visitors a more authentic, research-driven perspective, as well as bridging the gap between more academic resources and the audiences who visit Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse with interest in this material but without the skills, confidence or awareness of where to find it. This project will seek to further expand access to and use of the Norfolk Record Office’s wealth of ‘stories’, encouraging engagement with our county’s diverse audiences.”

Take Shelter

Take Shelter is a small charity that runs the only wartime school air raid shelter open to the public in the south of England. Their project will focus on civilian VE celebrations in Brighton and Sussex and the military experience of the soldiers of the Royal Sussex Regiment serving in the Far East in VJ Days. It will also look beyond the Second World War to the ways we mark service today including Armed Forces Day and Remembrance.

They will work in partnership with Mass Observation Archive, West Sussex Record Office and the Royal Sussex Regimental Museum, drawing on their archives and bringing together stories in innovative new ways. The project will create an online resource pack for primary schools in consultation with local schools, an exhibition of pop banners which can be used on-site at the shelter and as outreach and digital assets which can be enjoyed via the Take Shelter touchscreen terminals by both school and community visitors.

Michael Button, Chair of Take Shelter, says “we are very aware that those who lived through the war will soon no longer be with us. We are looking forward to bringing together the wartime voices from the archives so we can share them with our visitors and encourage them to reflect on what celebration and commemoration meant at the end of the Second World War and what it means to them today.”

VE Day Street Party on St Paul’s Street, Brighton, 1945 (reproduced courtesy of Brighton Museum)

Spectacle Media

Spectacle Media formed the Silwood Community Video Group in 2001 which has since documented over 350 hours of footage on the social and environmental impacts of regeneration on the Silwood Estate, Rotherhithe.

With this grant, Spectacle Media will run collaborative editing and participatory cataloguing sessions for Silwood community members as part of a Participatory Video Archive Workshop. Engaging with the archive, participants will “crowd catalogue,” working together to create multiple access points to the material from a community-centred perspective. Participants will guide the editing process, helping shape a narrative that preserves Silwood’s history and strengthening community cohesion through a “bottom-up” approach. They will also co-create films, using a participatory filmmaking model that emphasises shared responsibility and skills development. Through digital tools for group decision-making, video editing, and storytelling, participants will use video as a medium for advocacy and local history exploration.

Doreen Dower, 40 years secretary of the local tenants and residents association, says: “We need this project, too many people don’t know what happened in the past. After the regeneration there were people left but no community. This project might help bring a divided community together.”

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Grants awarded 2026

Archipelago Arts Collective

Archipelago Arts collective will work in collaboration with Leeds Industrial Museum to develop a new oral history project exploring intersectional lived experiences of Yorkshire’s industrial past and present. This community-led initiative will capture and preserve testimonies, in response to existing archival material, to challenge the perceptions of technological criticism and Luddism. Newly created works will be accessioned into the permanent digital collections of both archipelago and Leeds Museums and Galleries. The collected stories will be a central thread of a community-curated exhibition at Leeds Industrial Museum running from 2026 to 2028, diversifying the museum’s interpretation and ensuring that the voices of women, migrant workers, and the working class are central to the region’s industrial narrative.

Seán Ryan, Creative Co-Director of Archipelago Arts Collective, says: “this grant will enable us to preserve the histories of workers’ rights and technology. We are so excited to use collections to creatively reinterpret and interrogate our relationship with regional industrial heritage. In connecting the relevant, historic legacy of the Luddite uprisings to contemporary criticism around automation and AI through creative intervention, we will create important threads between a history of workers’ rights and our contemporary social challenges.”

Image credit: Pishdaad Modaressi Chahardehi

Epworth Old Rectory

The Grade 1 listed house, Epworth Old Rectory, was the childhood home of John and Charles Wesley, founders of the Methodist Movement. The team at Epworth Rectory will deliver a year-long programme bringing together three new audiences — migrant women resettled locally, people living with dementia, and home-educated young people — through shared activities rooted in the history of the house, its gardens and its nationally significant collections.

The Old Rectory will play host to collaborative work with migrant women exploring the ‘Methodist Women in Britain collection’, building towards a new exhibition in 2027. Dementia-friendly sessions will draw on objects and writings to inspire stories and reflections that shape a new sensory garden. This will be developed alongside home-educated children, who will also take part in ‘Museum Take-over’ activities linking directly to history, literacy and the wider curriculum. Through intergenerational and intercultural exchange, supported by outreach and practical help such as transport, the programme will reduce isolation, widen access to heritage, and strengthen the Old Rectory’s role as a welcoming centre for learning, wellbeing and community connection.

Sarah Friswell, Chair of Epworth Old Rectory, says: “one of our core values is inclusivity and this funding will enable us to open up our collections more widely, particularly with the three audience groups we have identified who might not usually consider visiting a museum such as ours. This work will form a key part of our new Forward Plan, which will improve how we share our stories and heritage into the future.”

Image credit: Epworth Old Rectory

The Exmoor Society

The Exmoor Society will set out on a new archives project to strengthen access to Exmoor’s cultural heritage. The Exmoor Society Archive preserves and cares for collections relating to Exmoor’s artists, writers, archaeologists, environmentalists, historians and photographers. The Archive forms part of The Exmoor Society, a charity established to protect and conserve Exmoor National Park for the benefit of its local communities, visitors, landscapes, wildlife, habitats and cultural heritage.

Among the Archive’s most significant holdings is the collection of Hope Bourne, the Exmoor writer and artist. In partnership with South West Heritage Trust at the Somerset Museum of Rural Life, the Society recently supported a major exhibition exploring Hope Bourne’s life, writing and artwork. This engagement grant will allow them to commission bespoke, portable display cases designed specifically for the safe and professional presentation of archival material.

Exmoor Society trustee responsible for the archive, Lisa Eden, says: “this exhibition was extremely popular, but difficult for residents of Exmoor itself to visit due to the distance involved and poor public transport links so in 2026 we intend to bring it to an Exmoor location, at the heart of the community where Hope Bourne lived. These new display cases will not only support the Hope Bourne exhibition but will also form a long-term shared resource, available to small heritage organisations across Exmoor for future displays and community projects.”

‘Exmoor ponies on Withyhoof Common’ by Hope L. Bourne Image credit: Exmoor Society

The Gardeners’ House

The Gardners’ House, Penzance, will use their engagement grant to kickstart a project called ‘Seed Stories’. They will explore seeds, native plants and Cornish language alongside a local writer and botanists, developing creative responses with community groups in Penzance. The project team will produce a handling collection of seeds with images and engaging stories. Local people will also be invited to join in a programme of fun and fascinating activities exploring the incredible world of seeds starting in autumn 2026.

Miki Ashton, director of the Gardeners’ House, says: “Seeds are something we all recognise. They hold memories of childhood, of family meals and of landscapes that matter to us. This exciting project will provide an opportunity for people of all ages and different places to come together.”

Emily Goddard, Collections Manager at the Gardeners’ House, says: “As a collecting archive, our role is to preserve not only objects but the stories that give them meaning. Seeds may be small, but they carry powerful associations with place, identity and belonging.”

Nature journalling with Natasha McEwan Image credit: The Gardeners’ House, Penzance

Hallé Concert Society

Eileen Simpson and Ben White, Artists and Founders of Open Music Archive, are working with the archive of the Hallé orchestra to develop the project ‘Towards Usership’. Their aim is to creatively activate historic orchestral recordings from the last 100 years and explore new forms of belonging through archival reuse. The artists will develop a new sound and moving image work, combined with turntablism, to reimagine public‑domain Hallé recordings. The work will incorporate live manipulation, sampling and performance. Workshop activity with young producers will inform the development of the work, opening out the archive as a space for creative learning and experimentation. The completed artwork will be shared through a public screening and online release under a copyleft licence, extending access to the Hallé’s archive and supporting long‑term engagement with its collections.

Simpson and White say: “As artists, we’re excited to collaborate with the Hallé Archive on this project, which brings historic orchestral recordings into creative dialogue with contemporary practice. The National Archives Engagement Grant opens up new opportunities for the development of our art practice, building on our work with Hallé and partners at Manchester Metropolitan University and University College London. The project will reveal the archive in new ways and invite wider public engagement with these remarkable materials.”

Image credit: Hallé Concert Society

Trafford Council

Trafford Local Studies & Archives (TLSA) will use their engagement grant to launch ‘Our Stories, Our Legacy’ which will deliver three inclusive, archives-based engagement workshops to members of the Trafford African & Caribbean over 50s club (TAC). Content created from the workshops will then feature in an exhibition at the TLSA centre.

The project will support participants to explore, share, and record their life stories and collective histories, strengthening feelings of belonging while addressing the historic under-representation of Caribbean voices within TLSA collections. TAC members are first and second generation immigrants who have played a vital role in shaping the social, cultural, and economic life of Trafford, particularly post-World War Two. However, much of this history remains absent from formal archives and institutional records. This project seeks to address that gap by working collaboratively with TAC to recognise their experiences as pieces of valuable heritage and to ensure they their lived experiences are preserved for future generations to access.

Matthew Wilkinson, Trafford Local Studies & Archive Manager, says: “It is such exciting news that TLSA have been awarded this grant to deliver archive-based workshops with local residents. We look forward to delivering them and seeing the results of the conservations and activities planned. This engagement grant helps Trafford to continue delivering culture and heritage for all, a corporate priority for the borough.”

Image credit: Trafford Local Studies & Archives

University for the Creative Arts (UCA)

UCA will work with Lewisham Heritage Archives on the project, ‘Stall Tales’. to celebrate, and make visible, the history of London’s street markets. Street markets are central to their communities, particularly in Lewisham where the market dates back to the 1890s. It survived attempts by the Council to clear it in the early twentieth century, as well as devasting bombing during the Second World War. The descendants of many of those first licensed to trade in Lewisham market in the 1930s still work there now and the market is an enduring part of the area’s local character.

Evidence for the market’s history exists in the formal council records in the Lewisham Heritage archives, and in the (untapped) memories and family histories of the stallholders. Historians and researchers from University for the Creative Arts will bring these two resources together through citizen-history techniques. They will hold oral history interviews and photo-history workshops which will result in new material for the archives, and public displays to make the history of the market visible in the market itself.

Meg Woof from Lewisham Heritage, says, “this is an exciting opportunity for Lewisham Heritage to bring awareness to the history of Lewisham Market already living in the archives, and to add new stories, voices, and perspectives to the collection, recording them for Lewisham’s future generations.”

Lewisham Market, July 2025 Image credit: Stall Tales project at UCA/Camille Serisier