The Mills Archive has won a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to extend and improve our Friends organisation. The grant forms part of the HLF’s Catalyst scheme to improve the long-term viability of charities such as ours.
The funding for our project – Making friends, engaging people – will offer us several strategic opportunities and will empower us to widen our network of supporters and contribute to making the Archive sustainable. We will achieve this by introducing new strands to our Friends scheme to cater for a wider range of interests and needs, including commercial interests. At the same time, we will be able to offer benefits to a wide range of heritage groups and carry our message about the importance of preserving the records of our milling heritage even further.
As the new Development Officer, this is my first grant success for The Mills Archive, and I am particularly excited about this opportunity. The Archive has grown considerably since its creation in 2002. It is only natural that we now look to the future and how we can ensure our sustainability, so that we can continue to care for documents and images of milling and provide a free resource for any member of the public to access for many years to come.