New Funding to Celebrate Rural and Coastal Working-Class Heritage
New funding for Historic England's Everyday Heritage grants programme has been announced, celebrating working-class histories — this time, focusing on buildings or places in rural and coastal locations.
Historic England is funding new projects to explore untold stories and celebrate the people and places at the heart of our history.
From the Essex seaside to the West Pennine moors, grants will be available to fund community-led and people-focused projects that aim to further the nation’s collective understanding of the past. They will need to focus on heritage that links people to overlooked historic places, with a particular interest in recognising and celebrating working-class histories.
So far, the Everyday Heritage grant programme has funded extraordinary projects, from the history of roller-skating in Birmingham to rhubarb farming in Leeds.
Now Historic England is inviting groups to explore some of the hidden histories of rural locations such as villages, hamlets, farmland, and moors, alongside coastal locations including the seaside, docks, piers and cliffs.
Launched in 2022, the programme has already funded over 100 projects to a total of £1.8 million, celebrating fascinating untold stories from across England. Each grant awarded so far has left lasting legacies for the communities involved.
Heritage is all around us – it’s the pubs, factories, football clubs and council estates where most people have lived, worked and played for hundreds of years. But often the stories of ordinary people and places aren’t included in the history records and memories of their extraordinary impact on history fade away.
This programme is all about funding community-led projects that will recognise and celebrate the lives of ordinary people. Over the past few years, projects have surpassed our expectations and now we hope that by focusing on rural and coastal heritage we can help communities uncover even more forgotten histories for us all to learn from and enjoy.
The Everyday Heritage grants programme helps to uncover forgotten or overlooked stories that have been at the heart of working-class communities so that they can be properly celebrated by future generations.
I am delighted that people living in our many diverse rural and coastal towns and villages will have this opportunity to shine a spotlight on the stories and places that matter to them.
Previous projects funded by Everyday Heritage grants
Bodmin at Work
A project called Bodmin at Work, used 95,000 glass plate negatives documenting working and everyday life in Cornwall between 1939 and 1982 as the inspiration to engage people with their working-class heritage. Kresen Kernow and their community partners intoBodmin worked closely with young people and people experiencing loneliness or isolation following the pandemic, as well as the wider community in Bodmin.
The project showed how images can engage a community with the history of the town and its people. Through the project over 500 original glass plate negatives from the collection were digitised and catalogued with new information, making them accessible for the first time and preserving them for the future.
Rags to Riches
Rags to Riches, captured the stories of Sikh mothers who, after migrating to Smethwick in the West Midlands from Punjab, India, worked as sewing machine operatives. Often coming from rural villages, they used their traditional skillset in sewing to bring in an income for the family, contributing to the thriving textiles industry in the region.
Lead by the artist Ranbir Kaur in partnership with the Sikh Development Academy, this project brought together a group of Sikh-Punjabi women to share their experiences and personal journeys with other women across the Sandwell area. Together they produced a large piece of textile art, which expressed a ‘common thread’ between their stories. This piece was exhibited at Smethwick Library in July 2023.
Gwenda’s Garage
In 2023, Gwenda’s Garage, led by Out of the Archive, produced a musical telling the story of the garage and its women. Gwenda’s Garage was founded in 1985 in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, by three women mechanics: Ros Wollen (aka Roz), Annette Williams, and Ros Wall. Faced with difficulty finding employment in a male-dominated field, they established their own repair workshop.
In November 2023, two performances of Gwenda’s Garage were held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. The show sold out immediately and received an exceptional audience response. Alongside the production, Out of the Archive created an exhibition and a public workshop to memorialise Gwenda’s Garage, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the repeal of Section 28 in England. The exhibition was seen by 130,000 people.
Landladies of Morecambe
The Landladies of Morecambe project was delivered by Morecambe Heritage. It featured local young people interviewing former landladies, family members and paying guests about their experiences of bed and breakfasts in Morecambe over the decades.
Until the 1980s, Morecambe in Lancashire was a favourite holiday destination for working-class families from Northern England and Scotland. Famed for their no-nonsense reputation, gruff manner and strict rules and regulations, Morecambe’s landladies have seen it all. 12 of the final interviews are available to watch here.
'Everyday Heritage Grants: Celebrating Working Class Histories' is one of the cultural projects Historic England is delivering to shine a light on the diversity of the nation’s heritage.
How to Apply
Historic England is inviting community and heritage organisations across the country to apply for grants of up to £25,000 through its scheme, 'Everyday Heritage Grants: Celebrating Working Class Histories'.
Each project should enable people to share untold stories about the places where they live, encouraging communities to examine and tell their own stories in their own ways.
Applications open on Friday 16 August and close on Monday 7 October.
Inclusive Heritage Advice Hub
Historic England has just launched a new online Inclusive Heritage Advice Hub. The Hub is part of our commitment to supporting the heritage sector to become more diverse, to engage a wider range of people with heritage, and to recognise and celebrate a more inclusive heritage.
It contains digestible information for any organisation working with heritage who wants guidance on making their work as diverse and inclusive as possible and will be useful to applicants applying for this grant. Case studies of successful projects from this round of grants will be showcased on the Hub.
