We’re pleased to announce the final grantees of the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund before it becomes the Esmée Fairbairn Communities and Collections Fund. Through the fund we’ve awarded over £14m in nearly 200 grants since 2011.
Here are December 2024’s successful grantees:
Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, £92,000 for “From the Caribbean to Cambridge: Reimagining Pre-Columbian Archaeology Collections Together”, to engage the Caribbean diaspora in the East of England.
Derby Museums Trust, £94,634 for “Coproducing the sustainable future of Derby Museums”, a participatory project using natural history and archaeology collections to create systems for shared decision making with young people on Derby Museums’ sustainable future.
Leeds Museums and Galleries, £99,690 to work with Leeds charity Space2 to connect herbarium collections with the social and historical stories of East Leeds and use a range of creative approaches to help these links come alive for the wider community.
Manchester Art Gallery, £54,527 to work with alternative education providers to co-develop and test new approaches to loaning artworks from the Rutherston Loan Collection.
Milton’s Cottage Trust, £82,183 to explore new approaches to the co-creation of inclusive audio description, bringing together blind and partially blind participants with published poets to respond to the collection of rare and first-edition books by Milton.
Museum of Cambridge, £99,802 to place disabled individuals at the forefront of researching, curating and sharing the histories of disabled people in Cambridgeshire.
Royal Armouries Museum, £100,000 to accelerate the implementation of a participation strategy, embedding inclusive and participatory practice with hard to reach and hardly reached local communities.
South Wales Miners’ Museum, £100,000 to reimagine and revitalise the permanent exhibition space through a participatory process.
Image credit to Leeds Museums and Galleries