Gloucester History Festival
This year’s Gloucester History Festival will receive £40,000 from Historic England’s Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund.
The money will support the Festival and its partners in a difficult year for events and for the wider heritage sector. The grant will support the Festival’s community programme and digital content, giving local people lots of opportunities to celebrate Gloucester and its heritage as the city recovers from the impacts of Covid-19.
Gloucester History Trust is one of 70 organisations across England to have been awarded a grant through this fund.
The announcement comes as Historic England today launch new funding for urgent maintenance and repairs at historic sites in the South West
Chair of the Gloucester History Trust which runs the Festival, Richard Graham, said: “This wonderful news of Historic England funding helps ensure our tenth anniversary Festival goes ahead in September, and in new ways that we are exploring in detail with our partners in the Gloucester Heritage Forum. We’ll announce more news on the Festival at the end of June.”
Jacqui Grange, Manager of the Gloucester History Festival, said: “Historic England’s grant will fund a project called Gloucester Looking Up, a city-wide response to Covid-19. Heritage venues across Gloucester will inspire people to look up at buildings, look up at their heritage and to look up online, ensuring the city’s built and lived heritage is part of our shared recovery.”
For more information about Gloucester Looking Up visit Gloucester History Festival website.
Rebecca Barrett, Historic England Regional Director said: “This £1.8m fund was set up to help heritage organisations, such as Gloucester History Trust and its city-wide partners, that have been severely affected by the impact of Coronavirus by providing grants to help them survive the immediate challenges posed by the pandemic, and to prepare for recovery.”
More good news...
The good news for Gloucester comes as Historic England launch a second emergency fund to support the heritage sector recovery from the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The new fund, which will be up to £3 million, will award grants to those who care for some of England’s most significant historic sites in the South West to help fund urgent maintenance, repairs and investigations where our support is most needed. The business generated will help heritage specialists, whose livelihoods have been severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Grants of up to £25,000 will be offered to fix urgent problems at locally-cherished historic buildings and sites which are normally visited by the public, so that they can re-open as quickly as possible, subject to COVID-19 restrictions, and thrive once again. The funding can be used to address problems such as damaged roofs, masonry and windows, to hire scaffolding to prevent structural collapse, or commission surveys necessary to inform urgent repairs.
More information on eligibility and how to apply: https://historicengland.org.uk/covid-19-fund/