Nineteen projects of all shapes and sizes have shared over £1million since the city was named as a priority development area by HLF East Midlands in 2013. That’s before a further £8.5m which has been earmarked for the city’s historic Silk Mill, site of the world’s first factory.

“Thanks to National Lottery players we’ve supported hundreds of people to discover and celebrate Derby’s rich and diverse heritage,” said Jonathan Platt, Head of HLF East Midlands.

[quote=Jonathan Platt, Head of HLF East Midlands]"Thanks to National Lottery players we’ve supported hundreds of people to discover and celebrate Derby’s rich and diverse heritage."[/quote]

“Local people are proud of the fact that their city was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, helped to create the country’s railway network and built the world’s best-known aero engines. They want to share this knowledge alongside other fascinating stories of their communities in peacetime and war.

“Derby is still a priority area for our funding and we’re interested to hear from other organisations and community groups about their new ideas for heritage projects.”

Heritage also makes a major economic contribution to the city - a 2013 HLF report showed that heritage-based tourism is now worth £26.4billon to the UK.

Ongoing projects in Derby

The biggest project on the horizon is the plan to create the Silk Mill Museum as part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. Although the old industrial museum shut down in 2011, plans are well advanced to re-open it to mark Derby as the ‘city of makers’. From silk mills to aero engines the new museum plans to cover 300 years of industrial innovation. A development grant of more than £800,000 is currently helping the project team to finalise the details for the next £8.5m of National Lottery funding to be released.

Other recently completed or ongoing projects include:

• Twitchers, birders, and nature lovers of all kinds have been fascinated by the lives of peregrine falcons nesting on the tower of Derby Cathedral. A £49,000 HLF grant gave Derbyshire Wildlife Trust the wherewithal to install webcams in the birds’ nest so that fascinated residents could watch chicks hatch. Fearless volunteers even abseiled down the tower to clean the nest
• What better way to capture the essence of days gone by than through historic photographs? Two HLF-supported projects have made this possible. The UK’s longest-running photographers’ studio, WW Winter, has been capturing scenes of Derby life for more than 140 years. Thanks to a £50,000 HLF grant, volunteers have preserved, catalogued and displayed the studio's archive of fragile glass-plated negatives. Meanwhile the history of Derbyshire County Cricket Club has been preserved by archiving images dating back to the 1870s, thanks to a £60,600 grant
• Young people delved into the history of the city’s parks - Derby Arboretum was the first public park in England, opening in 1840. The young people wrote and recorded a hip hop track to share their discoveries with a larger audience; they performed the song at a celebration gig thanks to a £48,800 HLF grant
• Derby’s diversity was highlighted by a project run by the Open Centre which explored faith, culture and heritage through the lives of five local families. A £93,700 HLF grant enabled the charity, and a dedicated group of volunteers, to create an exhibition, make films and produce teaching materials covering such topics as migration and settlement
• Many Sikh soldiers served with distinction in the British Indian Army during the First World War. The National Sikh Heritage Centre received a £10,000 grant to trace their contribution and the resulting exhibition includes artefacts, letters and documents that vividly tell the story of the conflict

HLF projects have created volunteering and training opportunities for many hundreds of local people in Derby. More than 1,000 volunteers have taken part in one of these projects, which have also created over 700 new training opportunities, teaching skills in everything from archiving to film-making. The Silk Mill project alone will involve an estimated 500 people and create 23 jobs. 

In numbers

• 733 people trained in new skills
• 1,071 volunteering opportunities
• 45,000 photographs of Derby life saved
• 143 years of cricketing history preserved
• 100 parks memories shared