National Lottery Heritage Grants

History of Childhood

Applicant: The Iris Project

Project description: To develop a new and permanent exhibition area within the Rumble Museum at Cheney School. Curated by students and the wider community, it will tell the stories of local childhood through toys, games and related artefacts. The exhibition will also be displayed online.

Decision: Reject

Growing futures - Reviving the flax industry in South Somerset

Applicant: OSR Projects Art & Culture Community Interest Company

Project description: To bring a new perspective, linking the history of flax, twine and sail production at Dawe’s Twineworks. The project will focus ideas of growth, production and consumption in relation to the global climate emergency. A programme of events at Dawe's Twineworks will include Od Arts Festival 2025.

Decision: Award grant of £14,500

The Green Line - Celebrating 200 years of the modern railway - it's heritage and biodiversity

Applicant: Fourth Reserve Foundation

Project description: To share and celebrate the history of the local railway line, including talks, a short documentary, creative events and community gatherings. To raise awareness and develop an understanding of the nature reserve as a heritage landscape and explore how railway land has evolved over 200 years. To protect and preserve features of the landscape to share with the public on a permanent basis. 

Decision: Reject

An Animated History of Enfield

Applicant: Animating Education CIC

Project description: To harness the power of stop motion animation to inspire and empower young people and preserve the rich history of Enfield, in partnership with the Museum of Enfield and to guide participants to explore Enfield’s historical landmarks and heritage sites. The project will create a stop motion animation film to celebrate the history of Enfield accessible to people through a digital legacy of at least five years.

Decision: Award grant of £19,050

The Old Market @ 200

Applicant: The Old Market Charitable Trust

Project description: To explore, learn, capture and communicate the 200-year heritage of The Old Market in Hove, creating a digital sound installation around the building and host a 'birthday' community event to celebrate the 200th birthday of The Old Market.

Decision: Award grant of £29,983

The Preservation, Safety and Improved Security of Holy Trinity Church, Wickwar Storerooms

Applicant: Parochial Church Council of Wickwar.

Project description: To make safe, dry and secure the Victorian (c.1840) historic stone single-storey storeroom within the listed curtilage of the church. To return the building to a useable and useful facility and to ensure its presence for another 200 years. 

Decision: Reject

Victory in Europe: A City Celebrates

Applicant: HSDC

Project description: The project will support students to develop essential lifelong skills to benefit them in future careers. It aims to provide young people with the opportunity to become better versed in the history of their country and region, develop pride in their community and the role it played during the Second World War.

Decision: Award grant of £43,860

St Ives Huers Hut - Restoration, Interpretation & Sustainable Reuse

Applicant: St Ives Town Council

Project description: Carry out essential works to safeguard both the physical structure and heritage of the Huers Hut. It will sensitively restore, repair and improve access to interpretation, and share the rich history and heritage value of the Huers Hut to a far wider audience and future generations.

Decision: Award grant of £44,672

"Tapes Up" The history of Wimbledon Speedway Racing.

Applicant: The Wimbledon in Sporting History Trust

Project description: To highlight the historic, cultural and economic importance of speedway in the borough of Merton. To collect material, document the sport and the impact of Speedway on the Wimbledon area and its importance to the local community. To provide a permanent display and focal point to preserve the rich and international history Speedway and to safeguard a legacy.

Decision: Reject

Toys Hill Heritage

Applicant: Toys Hill Village Hall and Chancel

Project description: To celebrate the Grade II listed building and the community which cares for it. To conserve the Arts and Crafts Hall, increase access to the village archive and create a digital record of Toys Hill, to renew and protect both the tangible and intangible legacy of the village. 

Decision: Award grant of £48,682

Gosport Cultural Education Project (GCEP) - Gosport Giant Sing (GGS)

Applicant: Hampshire County Council on behalf of Hampshire Music Education Hub

Project description: To celebrate the rich heritage and forgotten stories of Gosport. The town’s children and young people (CYP) are to explore this through creative and performing arts workshops and showcase their creations to the wider community at the annual Fort Brockhurst Festival. 

Decision: Reject

Terry Frost: Preserving The Sun and The Moon

Applicant: Exeter Phoenix Ltd.

Project description: To restore the large stained-glass window in need to protect and preserve it for future generations. To celebrate and share this unique cultural heritage through community events and workshops that capture memories and provide insight into The Old English Exeter Book Riddles, and Frost’s important role within British art history.

Decision: Reject

St Mary the Virgin Roof Repair

Applicant: The Parochial Church Council of St Mary the Virgin

Project description: To replace parts of the stone tiled roof of the Grade I listed church to enable the building to remain watertight and usable by the local community and its visitors, now and for the future.

Decision: Award grant of £58,213

The St Peter and St Paul Heritage Window Restoration Project

Applicant: Buckingham Parish Church (St. Peter & St. Paul's) 

Project description: To fully refurbish the windows of the Grade I listed building and renew the lead, ties and fixings and address masonry defects to weatherproof the worship space for another 200 years.

Decision: Reject

Preserving the legacy of Tommy Flowers: uncovering lost histories of mid-20th Century computing innovation

Applicant: The Tommy Flowers Foundation

Project description: To unearth 'untold stories' of mid-20th century heritage, to promote historical investigation and inspire innovation in young people. Participants will learn about the hidden histories of Tommy Flowers' groundbreaking work in engineering and early computing. 

Decision: Award grant of £84,774

1968: Rivers of Blood, Sweat, Hope and Resilience

Applicant: PROTEGE DNA

Project description: To document the heritage of 35–40 first-generation Indian women. The project will work with Indian mothers and daughters to record Boliyaan, the traditional storytelling songs, and will share their experiences of arriving in England in the 1960s. It will reflect on Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and other significant events of 1968.

Decision: Award grant of £85,870

CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF SERVICE-WINDRUSH FOUNDATION 2025

Applicant: WINDRUSH FOUNDATION

Project description: To show and thank our funders and donors how their awards have helped the organisation and the community. To celebrate another milestone and help to increase the visibility of our mission and to allow us to highlight our history in innovation and advocacy and to strengthen the brand.

Decision: Award grant of £89,500

"Voices of Resilience: Preserving Arab-SWANA Heritage in London" - A contemporary archive documenting stories of survival, living, and finding community

Applicant: Shubbak: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture

Project description: To empower Arab and SWANA (South West Asian and North African) young people to explore the heritage of Arab and SWANA communities who came to London between the 1950s and 1970s. The project will offer a sense of connection, pride and belonging, and will document personal stories about migration, displacement and cultural identity. It aims to celebrate these stories, to remember, honour and preserve them and make them accessible to wider audiences. 

Decision: Award grant of £90,000

Restoring the organ: a cultural resource for the whole community.

Applicant: Parochial Church Council of the Ecclesiastical Parish of All Saints', Woodham

Project description: To restore the historic organ to secure its use in concerts and teaching for another hundred years.

Decision: Reject

VE Day: Memories of Peace

Applicant: Digital Drama CIC

Project description: To preserve, share and interpret the heritage surrounding the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. It will train local project volunteers in a variety of skills, including researching and writing combatant profiles, recording oral history interviews, producing an audio trail and a new film. The project will create an education pack for schools, run heritage talks and hold an intergenerational VE Day tea party for older residents and young participants.

Decision: Reject

Lost and Found: 19th century maritime Deptford interpreted through mudlark finds.

Applicant: Thames Festival Trust

Project description: To increase inclusion within the heritage sector, to recruit a representative cohort of young adults and offer a paid internship and mentorship programme to provide real benefit to their onward progression within the heritage sector.

Decision: Award grant of £123,968

Hidden Holborn Story Bank

Applicant: Holborn Community Association

Project description: To democratise and diversify heritage through the arts, supporting local under-represented people in Holborn to bring untold stories to life through a Public Art Heritage Trail and an exhibition. To capture and preserve community stories and produce a digital ‘Story Bank’, create new staffing roles to support the project and deliver traineeships for young people aged 16–25 who will learn heritage, creative and curation skills.

Decision: Reject

Empowering Future Leaders Celebrating 90 Years: The Fight and Successes for Opportunities for All in Sport and Recreation

Applicant: Sport and Recreation Alliance

Project description: To document Sport and Recreation Alliance’s (S&RA) history and to highlight the sector's role to drive societal change. To preserve records and artefacts and save them from deterioration and loss and make them accessible. To collect memories of past leaders, to inspire Young Community Ambassadors to prepare them as future sports leaders and to strengthen S&RA’s legacy and contribute to its future sustainability.

Decision: Reject

Protect Brill Common Forever!  Subtitle: Securing the future of Brill Common's wildlife and commoning heritage. 

Applicant: Brill Parish Council

Project description: This project aims to inspire long-term behavioural change in local people to ensure they “know”, value and look after the common. To raise awareness of the wildlife and heritage traditions and enhance the historic and natural heritage of Brill Common Local Wildlife Site.

Decision: Award grant of £154,261

Century by the Sea: art and artists at Newhaven 1925–2025

Applicant: Art in Place Sussex CIC

Project description: To create a legacy cultural heritage timeline to illustrate the story of Newhaven over the last century seen through the lens of art and artists, through community-inclusive research, oral history educational workshops, learning resources and commissioned ‘unseen stories’ artworks. To culminate in a free town centre project exhibition along with the main project legacy.

Decision: Reject

Spitalfields Trust: Rescue, Review, Refresh

Applicant: The Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust

Project description: To buy critical time to raise funds from a disposal, re-think the Archbishops Palace in Kent project and review our approach to rescuing heritage buildings.

Decision: Award grant of £225,687

Activate- Hidden Women of Hoxton

Applicant: Hoxton Hall

Project description: To celebrate past female key holders, female participants in community projects, girls groups and societies and managers and residents of Hoxton Hall. To use the heritage to “re-activate” public spaces at Hoxton Hall into exhibitions and use visual design to engage people to ensure a legacy that the women of Hoxton Hall are not forgotten.

Decision: Award grant of £228,708

Conservation for Accessible Heritage

Applicant: The Institute of Conservation (Icon)

Project description: To further enable work to champion heritage conservation. To recruit a Volunteer Programme Coordinator and deliver a programme of support, development and training for volunteers. To use conservation to facilitate greater and more equitable access to heritage for young people, underserved communities and the wider public.

Decision: Reject

Britannia - Restored to the Waves

Applicant: Britannia Sailing Trust SCIO

Project description: To complete the restoration of the heritage sailing vessel Britannia, expand and formalise the traineeship programme to support, preserve and grow heritage skills in young demographics. To involve local people, volunteers and other charities to increase public engagement with maritime heritage.

Decision: Reject

Keys to the Castle - Unlocking Bodiam's Past, Present and Future

Applicant: The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty

Project description: To present Bodiam’s stories through an audience-led design, and engage and interpret with hands-on activities to create a gateway to the world of heritage. The project will open up more of the castle to make it physically, emotionally and intellectually accessible to all and enable visitors to experience the magic of a fairytale castle.

Decision: Award grant of £239,000

The Dream of Discover

Applicant: Children's Discovery Centre East London

Project description: To focus on the 1993 Stratford City Challenge (SCC) regenerate initiative, to uncover, preserve and celebrate the community-led change that took a dangerous post-industrial area of East London and laid the foundations for the Olympic Games in 2012. To share the history of how a world-class museum came to be in Newham, working with local heritage partners to create a pop-up, hands-on museum space in the busy local shopping centre to recreate an SCC initiative.

Decision: Reject

Listen to the Voices - Digitising and Diversifying the British Entertainment History project

Applicant: British Entertainment History Project

Project description: To secure the future for the British Entertainment History Project, making the archive of 820 interviews accessible to a wider audience. Working with partners, the project aims to reach out to many thousands of people to discover the rich and comprehensive archive of interviews. To involve more people from diverse backgrounds in the organisation and represented in the archive and update the website to make it more accessible for people with disabilities.

Decision: Reject

Salt of Life: reconciling the past with the present for the future of the coastal communities in the New Forest

Applicant: University of Portsmouth

Project description: To bring the forgotten salt trade in the New Forest to the forefront of community engagement and co-creation and simultaneously work with groups and stakeholders, together building a sense of belonging and pride. To create educational tools to build resilience against environmental changes.

Decision: Reject

Fragile Threads: A collaborative programme led by the Royal School of Needlework to help raise awareness, increase understanding, and challenge behaviour around climate change and species loss through the medium of hand embroidery.

Applicant: Royal school of needlework

Project description: Collaborating with partner organisations, empower a diverse range of people to learn new skills and tell their biodiversity stories through embroidery to tackle the fragility of our natural world and ongoing species loss. 

Decision: Award grant of £247,974

Newham Heritage Month 2025

Applicant: London Borough of Newham

Project description: Newham At 60: A Borough Like No Other is to provide new material for the borough archive and Newham Heritage Month (NHM) website. The project plans to interpret and share research through exhibitions, screenings, performances, guided tours and workshops and contribute to a month-long celebration in September. The learning is to inform future programmes at the forthcoming Newham Heritage Centre.

Decision: Award grant of £248,552

St Leonards Parish Church "Raise the Roof" Appeal

Applicant: Parochial Church Council of Upton St Leonards

Project description: To repair the roof of the Grade II* listed church, install an accessible toilet and create new heritage resources. Th church aims to become part of the historical/heritage activities that take place in the county, increasing its use, boosting revenue streams and making it accessible to local people, tourists and disabled people who visit.

Decision: Award grant of £248,558

Past Futures: A People's History of the Isle of Wight

Applicant: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight Community Foundation

Project description: To establish a small grassroots fund and capacity building programme focusing on the towns, villages, workplaces, customs and traditions that shape us as a distinctive set of communities. To encourage collaboration and co-curation, engage new audiences and to utilise accessible processes to reach a broad and new audience. A programme will track, evaluate, learn from and share the Island's heritage.

Decision: Award grant of £249,777

Kara Hellys (Love Helston)

Applicant: Music and Dance Education Trust

Project description: To artistically reveal and illuminate some of the invisible cultural heritage stories linked to the Heritage Trail of Helston Town. To help MaDET educate and inform children and adults about lesser-known stories through a schools programme, Gwariers (Community Artists) workshops and Troyls (music, dance and word performances), and the Kara Hellys Travelling Show (Promenade Performance).

Decision: Reject

The Worshipful Company of Upholders - Opus Anglicanum cathedrals project

Applicant: The Upholders Charity

Project description: To support, train, develop, recruit and retain a teams of volunteer broderers to work in 14 English cathedrals, to provide vital conservation work to upkeep and conserve historic ecclesiastical textile collections in the cathedrals. The support is to help guarantee the work of volunteer groups, to conserve vital heritage and craft skills for future generations.

Decision: Reject

Rebuilding Mengham Station, Seafront Hayling Island and adjacent access paths

Applicant: Hayling Light Railway Limited

Project description: To rebuild Mengham with new disabled friendly platforms, paved access paths, shelters, seats and rails, to enable a fully accessible railway at all the stations and to raise awareness of narrow-gauge railways, give enjoyment to those who wish to travel along the seafront and educate children/adults about the railway and its heritage.

Decision: Reject

St Mabyn Peace Memorial Hall Roof and insulation Project.

Applicant: Saint Mabyn Peace Memorial

Project description: To insulate and re-roof the hall to improve energy efficiency, reduce the carbon footprint and increase resilience due to the increase to energy costs so the Hall remains a hub for the rural community in North Cornwall for another 100 years.  

Decision: Reject

The Old Forge Community Hub

Applicant: Healthy Babies UK CIC

Project description: To undertake necessary conservation works to the Grade II listed Old Forge in Tiverton, supporting the required works to the buildings fabric to enable better use from the organisation and the women/families that we support.

Decision: Reject

Green Rhythm Drum Festival / workshop and Training

Applicant: Green Rhythm Ltd

Project description: To elevate African drumming's global recognition, to foster cultural exchange and showcase Nigerian talent to diverse UK audiences. To empower drummers through advanced training, mentorship and exposure to international industry standards. It aims to offer workshops and network events that connect UK-based and Nigerian artists, and contribute to the cultural richness of the UK's arts scene. 

Decision: Reject

SPORT MAKES OUR SHARED HISTORY

Applicant: Children's Football Alliance Ltd

Project description: To support young people to research local history through games and sports, to display the research in local exhibitions and upload to a project website to support cross-curricular and create a living legacy through shared learning and shared heritage.

Decision: Reject

Kent Coppice Restoration Project

Applicant: Woodwose Coppice Community Interest Company

Project description: To restore overgrown and under-managed coppice woodlands, enhance habitat diversity and promote the resurgence of native species. To work closely with local communities to reconnect people with the natural heritage, offer a hands-on opportunity to learn and practice traditional coppicing techniques, to ensure the survival of the cultural landscape and safeguard the skills and knowledge that are integral to Kent’s rural heritage.

Decision: Reject

The Conservation Foundation's Heritage Trees Campaign

Applicant: The Conservation Foundation

Project description: To raise awareness and foster local engagement, documenting and promoting the conservation of heritage trees. To create an interactive website as a knowledge bank for mulberries, yews and elms. To highlight these trees to protect tree populations and their historical landscapes, and use education and involvement as tools for environmental heritage conservation.

Decision: Reject