Community Hub Seed Corn Grants awarded in Round 1
Here are the proposals that were awarded Community Hub Seed Corn Grants in the programme's first funding round, to spark new ideas and approaches to community engagement with heritage.
Black Men Teach
Black Men Teach CIC will use their £5,000 grant to develop a community-led programme that centres belonging, identity and aspiration for Black boys. This programme will create safe and affirming spaces where they can feel seen, heard and valued. The project will allow Black Men Teach to strengthen local partnerships, pilot new activities, and lay the foundations for sustainable, long-term impact within communities.
This funding comes at a crucial moment for our organisation as it allows us to invest in spaces that foster belonging and challenge misconceptions, while supporting Black boys to thrive educationally and personally. We are incredibly grateful for this opportunity and excited about what this project will make possible.
Johnoi Josephs, Co-Founder of Black Men Teach CIC
Black Men Teach CIC.
Inspiring Yarns CIC
Inspiring Yarns CIC will use their grant to deliver the ‘Fabric of our Community’ project. This intergenerational project will enable them, through story-telling and textile arts, to create a textile map of their community, highlighting areas of significance to Northern Ireland’s rich textiles history.
We are absolutely delighted to accept this grant to deliver our Fabric of our Community project. The project combines everything we are passionate about as an organisation and creates a tactile art piece which will document how people feel connected through textiles.
Claire Anketell, CEO of Inspiring Yarns CIC
Inspiring Yarns.
Museum X
Museum X is ‘an experimental museum bringing people, places, and stories together to test ideas and reimagine African and Caribbean heritage in a whole new way.’ They have secured funding for their project ‘Our Living Archives’ which will see them work with rural descendant communities in Cornwall to explore how archives can better reflect lived experience, migration histories and the region’s global connections. The anticipated impact includes the creation of a new open-access heritage resource in dance history for the sector, enhanced interpretation of archival holdings at the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, and a contribution to bridging the gap between dance archives and the communities who keep traditional dance alive today. This bursary provides me with the confidence and practical curatorial skill set to transition from academic researcher to community heritage practitioner. I am also grateful for the opportunity to share the stories of women in Scotland’s dance history with a broader audience, while also strengthening the dialogue between past and present within the traditional dance sector.
We are pleased to receive this Seed Corn award from The National Archives in such a competitive round. This funding allows us to test creative, community-led approaches to building ‘living archives’ that expand how heritage is collected, interpreted and shared.
Sandra Shakespeare, Founding Director of Museum X CIC
Museum X.
Newleaf Foundation
A Seed Corn grant will facilitate the Newleaf Foundation’s initiative to conduct approximately 40 life-story interviews with women from diverse backgrounds, including Somali, Pakistani, Afghan, Romanian, Nigerian, and Caribbean communities. These interviews aim to illuminate the lived experiences of immigrants and individuals from minority ethnic groups who have encountered mental health challenges, substance abuse issues, and domestic violence.
The interviews will be systematically transcribed and, when necessary, translated to ensure accessibility to a broader audience. Subsequently, these narratives will be archived on a free digital platform, thereby establishing a lasting repository that documents the resilience and strength of these individuals.
Newleaf Foundation.
Proud Gypsy Traveller
Through their project, ‘Stories in Motion: Preserving Ethnic Gypsy & Traveller Histories’, Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC will work with Gypsy and Traveller individuals and families in South Yorkshire and surrounding areas to record and celebrate lived histories, cultural traditions and personal stories that are rarely represented within mainstream archives. Through creative community workshops, participants will share oral histories, photographs and reflections on travelling, home, identity and belonging. The material gathered will be curated into a portable pop-up exhibition and digital display, ensuring these stories can be shared both within the community and with wider audiences.
For generations, Gypsy and Traveller heritage has largely been recorded by external institutions. This project will support the community to begin reclaiming that narrative - documenting their own histories, in their own voice, and shaping how their culture is represented and preserved. The project will also help Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC build the skills and partnerships needed to develop a longer-term vision for a community-led Gypsy and Traveller archive and heritage space.
Remembering the Past
‘Shared Ground’ is a partnership project between Remembering The Past, Burradon and Camperdown Community Association and Imagining Better. It will explore how sharing memories and experiences can build relationships and inspire future community action. Based in Burradon, and examining community in North Tyneside, the project will bring older and younger residents together to map important communal spaces, reflect on how the village has changed, and consider what these shared stories mean for its future. The pilot will strengthen local connections, support wider participation in Burradon Forum, and create a more inclusive record of village heritage.
This funding gives us the chance to pilot a more future-focussed approach to heritage work. By creating space for people across generations to listen to one another, we hope to uncover shared values and support small but meaningful steps that help Burradon continue to thrive.
Alexandra Watson, Director of Remembering the Past
Burradon Club – Remembering the Past.
Southend Museums
Southend Museums have secured funding for their Loss to Legacy project. With this grant, we will begin training community members as oral historians to gather and archive the stories, memories and recollections of those who socialised at The Cliff over the decades. It will also allow us to start working in partnership with the community to co-design a fitting memorial for The Cliff. Both the memorial and the archive of oral histories will be a huge asset to the local and wider academic communities to learn about and remember the huge impact of this unique queer space.
This funding will kick-start urgent work to memorialise The Cliff, which closed suddenly in July 2025 after over 50 years as an LGBT pub. Its closure marks the end of an era. For half a century, The Cliff was a hub of LGBTQ+ life in south-east Essex, but this funding will ensure its significance can live on and support our community to become custodians of our own history.
Sarah Wayman, Project Manager at Southend Museums
Southend Museums.
Tessa Hallmann Photography
This New Ground
Archive of Us – Unlocked Voices’ is a pilot heritage project led by This New Ground, a female neurodivergent-led arts organisation working with adults with a learning disability in Portsmouth. The project places adults with a learning disability at the centre of heritage-making as paid co-curators, story leaders and facilitators. Building on 50 oral histories collected by researchers with a learning disability, the project team works in partnership with Portsmouth Archives and Libraries to test new, accessible ways of interpreting and sharing these stories through a pop-up exhibition, listening posts and community zine-making workshops.
For the first time, people with a learning disability are not just contributing their stories to an archive – they are deciding how those stories are shared, valued and understood. This funding allows us to turn unheard histories into a public, accessible space where people with a learning disability are recognised as leaders in their own heritage.
Nathalie Russell-Clarke, Co-Director for This New Ground
This New Ground.
Voyage
Voyage Youth will be working on a new intergenerational heritage project that will support 15 young people in Hackney to help formally archive the stories of our Windrush elders. Through this programme, young participants will be trained in community archiving, oral history and heritage documentation, working closely with elders whose experiences helped shape modern Britain.
The project will culminate in the formal archiving of the elders’ book and related materials in Hackney. Working with partners including Hackney Archives and the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, the project will ensure these powerful stories are preserved and accessible for future generations. By connecting young people directly with living history, the programme aims to inspire new pathways into heritage, culture and the creative industries while honouring the legacy of the Windrush generation.
Voyage Youth Group 3.