Development Assistant Lucy has just submitted an ambitious grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. Read on to find out what we hope to save and the benefits that we hope to offer the mills community.
Mill Makers: The Wright Records, is our latest grant application for an ambitious project that – if we are successful in securing funding – will catalogue, preserve and make available many of our significant millwrighting collections. The contents of these collections will be useful for a range of people, from mill researchers, engineers and architects, to groups running mills and to modern-day millwrights themselves.
Such a project has been a long time coming. Many of us remember the loss of Vincent Pargeter, and the interest that this proposed project has already generated shows the value of an archive for mill preservation, training and education in today’s world.
As a charity, grants are a vital part of our income stream. Grants help us to embark on ambitious cataloguing projects to save important parts of the nation’s heritage and to make them accessible to you, the public.
It can be difficult, however, to find grant givers who will support initiatives to directly improve a charity’s sustainability.
Fortunately, this need has already been addressed by the Heritage Lottery Fund. In February they awarded us £95,300, which was made possible by National Lottery players. The current project at which this grant is directed, is designed to strengthen the Mills Archive’s capacity to fundraise, manage and govern itself so that the milling records it cares for are safely preserved and made available for generations to come.
One of the biggest achievements so far has been recruiting a Development Assistant to attract new funds and to build relationships with supporters and users. It is because of this role, the creation of which is being funded by the HLF for 2 years, that we have Lucy on our team and that we have been able to submit this fresh grant application for Mill Makers.
