Heritage Lottery Grant for Holburne Education Team

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Heritage Lottery grant helps the Holburne to reveal history of Sydney Gardens

The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded the Holburne Museum a Young Roots grant of £9,900 towards a project which will engage young people with the history and heritage of Sydney Gardens, Bath’s oldest park.

The project, which is also supported by The Norie Trust, will last for three weeks during which time the Holburne will run workshops for 13 to 16 year olds in collaboration with Compass, Mentoring Plus and the Children’s Society. These organisations work with vulnerable children and those who are at risk of offending.

Three different workshops will run over three weeks and each workshop will help the teenagers to interpret history in diverse ways. The first is “Media Mash” which will produce an inventive concoction of vision and music led by Tristan Parkinson from Souljah Clique, an independent musicians’ group based in Bristol, and digital artist Ross Wallis. The second workshop will focus on animation to create “Stories from the Garden” working with Suited and Booted an award-winning production company. In the third week the spotlight will be on clothing with fashion and textile artist Liz Lippiatt who will lead “Telling tales with textiles”.

These workshops will all offer teenagers the opportunity to learn about the heritage of Sydney Gardens; work collaboratively; develop their self esteem; a sense of pride in the Gardens; and share their work with the community. They will learn and develop skills by using new media and explore creative arts to record and interpret the rich history of the Gardens.

Emma Finch, Education and Outreach Officer at the Holburne notes that the Heritage Lottery grant has transformed what the Museum’s education department is able to offer: “The success of our Heritage Lottery Fund application means that the education team can collaborate with exciting creative education providers, and work with vulnerable teenagers engaging with the wonderfully varied history of Sydney Gardens.”

The work produced during this industrious three-week period will be show cased at the Holburne’s annual Picnic in the Park, a free creative afternoon of activities from noon to 3pm on Sunday 30 August. In addition all of the participants will be able to work towards a bronze Art Award, a nationally recognised qualification.

Nerys Watts, HLF Head of Region for the South West said, “It is so important to get young people involved in the heritage that surrounds them by bringing it to life and making it relevant to them, and this is a wonderful project that will do just that with the unique heritage of Sydney Gardens.”

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For further information please contact:
Katie Jenkins, The Holburne Museum
T: 01225 820818
E: k.jenkins@bath.ac.uk
www.bath.ac.uk/holburne

Notes to Editors

Heritage Lottery Fund Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) sustains and transforms our heritage. From museums, parks and historic places to archaeology, natural environment and cultural traditions the HLF invests in every part of our diverse heritage. Since 1994 it has supported more than 26,000 projects allocating over £4billion across the UK
www.hlf.org.uk

The Norie Trust is supporting the project through the award of partnership funding

The Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath is currently closed for a development project of restoration and extension supported by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. When it re-opens the Holburne will house a collection of fine and decorative arts, built around the 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 Project will make us fully accessible to all visitors for the first time, allow more of the collection to be displayed than ever before, with an extension designed by Eric Parry Architects, and enable us to stage far more ambitious exhibitions, create a garden café and family friendly environment.

The Holburne Picnic in the Park
Sunday 30 August 12noon to 3pm Sydney Gardens, Bath
Free creative activities including hat and mask-making, masquerade performance and Stories from the Garden. Bring a picnic and join in. For further information about this event or our summer workshops T: 01225 820829 www.bath.ac.uk/holburne

Sydney Gardens are located behind the Holburne Museum. The Holburne Museum was originally the Sydney Hotel and provided the gateway to the eighteenth-century pleasure garden. Sydney Gardens are believed to be the only surviving footprint of eighteenth-century pleasure garden in the country. They are listed as Grade II and are of national significance. Their 12 acres were planned and laid out by the architect Harcourt Masters in 1795. The gardens originally housed delights such as a grotto, maze, a mechanical swing and supper boxes and were frequented, amongst many others, by the Royal family and Jane Austen. Today the garden has the Kennet & Avon canal and Brunel’s Great Western Railway in its grounds.

The Children’s Society is a leading children’s charity committed to making childhood better for all children in the UK
www.childrenssociety.org.uk

The Compass Project is the inter-agency Children’s Fund partnership that funds the Youth Inclusion and Support Panel linked to the Youth Offending Team, under the umbrella of Bath & North East Somerset Council

Mentoring Plus is a youth crime prevention project working with vulnerable young people who are at risk of offending. The project provides an intensive mentoring and education support programme structured over one year
www.mentoringplus.net

Further information about the creative agencies and individuals participating in the project can be found:
www.thesouljahclique.co.uk
https://web.mac.com/rosswallis
www.suitedandbooted.org
www.liz-lippiatt.com
www.artsaward.org.uk

Published on: 06/08/2009