The Holburne Museum has received a grant of £125,000 from the Clore Duffield Foundation
Today the Holburne Museum was one of eleven organisations to receive funding to open creative learning spaces from Dame Vivienne Duffield. The grants awarded today totalled £8.2million. Other recipients included The Donmar Warehouse; Kensington Palace; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Museum of Liverpool; National Theatre; Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Cornwall; Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon; Tate Britain; Turner Contemporary, Margate and the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester.
The Holburne has received an award of £125,000 for its new learning space within the transformed Museum. The room, which will be called The Clore Learning Space, will allow the Museum’s education team to teach a whole class for the first time in a purpose built, creative and inspiring environment when the Museum re-opens on 14 May this year. The space will also allow budding artists of all ages to have fun and learn in practical hands-on art workshops as well as in seminar groups.
Xa Sturgis, Director of the Holburne notes, “We are delighted to receive this award which will help us to provide a creative learning environment where artwork will be inspired by our collection when we re-open free of charge in a few months time.”
Over the last decade, the Clore Duffield Foundation, chaired by Dame Vivien Duffield, has distributed or allocated over £50 million in grants to charitable causes, including over £23 million for 42 Clore learning spaces throughout the UK. It has created and funded cultural and social leadership programmes, and is a founding supporter of the Cultural Learning Alliance, a collective voice to ensure that all children and young people have access to culture. Most recently the Foundation announced a five-year £1 million programme to fund poetry and literature initiatives for children and young people.
Dame Vivien Duffield said today: “I believe passionately that children and young people deserve the very best opportunities to benefit from the transforming power of our world-class cultural organisations. I am delighted that we have been able to support such outstanding projects created by some of the best architects in museums, galleries and theatres across the country. Now more than ever, I believe that culture should be at the heart of our children’s learning.”
Ends
Enquiries Please contact
Katie Jenkins
The Holburne Museum
Great Pulteney Street
Bath BA2 4DB
Tel: 
01225 388547
Email: k.jenkins@bath.ac.uk
Notes to Editors
The Holburne Museum is currently closed for a development project of restoration and extension. Our Grade I listed home is being lovingly restored while a striking extension designed by Eric Parry faces Sydney Gardens behind the Museum. Our project is supported by a grant of £4.6million from The Heritage Lottery Fund and many other trusts, foundations and donors. In addition to our endowment we have raised £10million and have £1million left to raise before we re-open our doors to the public free of charge on 14 May 2011.
When we re-open the Holburne will house a collection of fine and decorative arts, built around the exquisite art collection of Sir William Holburne assembled in 19th-century Bath. We hold a nationally significant collection of paintings, Renaissance bronzes and maiolica, silver, sculpture, furniture and porcelain, including important and popular works by Brueghel, Gainsborough, Stubbs and Turner. In recent years we have also established a national reputation for imaginative, scholarly and popular exhibitions.
The Holburne’s project transforms what we are able to offer all our visitors. It will make us fully accessible to all visitors for the first time, allow more of our collection to be displayed than ever before and enable us to stage far more ambitious exhibitions, offer a garden café, creative learning opportunities for all ages and a family friendly environment.
www.holburne.org
The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) enables communities to celebrate, look after and learn more about our diverse heritage. From our great museums and historic buildings to local parks and beauty spots or recording and celebrating traditions, customs and history, HLF grants open up our nation’s heritage for everyone to enjoy. Since 1994 it has supported more than 26,000 projects, allocating over £4 billion across the UK. www.hlf.org.uk
Dame Vivien Duffield is currently Chairman of the Royal Opera House Endowment Fund, a Director of the Southbank Centre board, a Governor of the Royal Ballet and a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum. Dame Vivien’s charitable work in the UK was acknowledged with the award of a CBE in 1989 and a DBE in 2000.
www.cloreduffield.org.uk
www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk
Published on: 24/03/2011