We’re pleased to announce the grantees of the most recent round of the Esmée Fairbairn Communities and Collections Fund. The fund supports projects using museum collections to improve inclusion and equitable working with community partners.
Here are June 2026’s awardees:
Bradford District Museums & Galleries and Summat Creative, £89,121 for “Re:View”, a project to identify disability histories and improve the representation of disabled people within the museum collections.
Kendal Museum, Cumbria Development Education Centre and the Nandi-Kendal Association, £100,000 to work with the Nandi-Kendal Association to collaboratively explore connected histories and shared heritage.
The People’s Palace and West of Scotland Regional Equality Council (WSREC), £100,000 to enhance the People’s Palace collection through community co-production to share new voices and provide a platform to explore difficult stories.
Pitt Rivers Museum, In-Spire Sounds, African Families in the UK (AFiUK) and Oxford Sudanese Supplementary School (OSSS), £99,315 for “Curate Your Future”, a programme to use global music collections to build confidence, skills and cultural pathways for underserved young people.
The Wallich and Amgueddfa Cymru, £99,536 for “Unhoused: A History of Homelessness”, a project to use trauma-informed co-production to co-create Wales’s first collection on homelessness.
Ulster Folk Museum (NMNI) and Nerve Centre, £98,463 for the ‘We are Here’ engagement project which seeks to nurture understanding, dialogue and mutual respect between different communities in Northern Ireland and test new ways of sharing authority over collections at the Ulster Folk Museum.
Main image: A stop at Amgueddfa Cymru on a walking tour of Cardiff with The Wallich