Museums team extends helping hand for heritage - thanks to Esmee Fairbairn Foundation

Council Museums team holds out helping hand for heritage projects with Esmée Fairbairn Foundation support  
  
The distinct heritage of Orkney’s many communities is set to benefit from the expertise of the Council’s Museums team, thanks to almost £100,000 of support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. 
  
The funding will support extra hours on a temporary basis for team members, opening up capacity for them to work closely with community groups on heritage related projects over the next 18 months. 
  
Aimed at supporting heritage at risk, especially in harder to reach areas outside Kirkwall and Stromness, the project has been awarded £99,928 from The Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund scheme, managed by the Museums Association.  
  
Groups such as development trusts and community-run heritage centres are invited to come forward with ideas they may have and to find out more about how the Council’s Museums team can support them.  
  
Assistance could include help with digitising collections, improving displays and signage, developing public arts projects to celebrate heritage, advice on potential funding sources, arranging loans - or tapping into the expert knowledge on archaeology, social history, folk lore and naval history that exists within the team.  
  
Ellen Pesci, the Council’s Curator in Social History, and is the first port of call for anyone interested in finding out more: “Right across Orkney there are pockets of remarkable heritage just waiting to be shared and communities have some great ideas on how they’d like to do this.  
  
“We very much want to be an enabler of this - to help equip communities to look after and promote their heritage or upgrade what they’re offering and tell their unique stories in their own way.  
  
“Many of the groups this may apply to in Orkney are small, volunteer run organisations with very limited resources.  
  
“Sharing our expertise with them makes sense and ultimately helps safeguard historical material - so we’re delighted to have secured the support of The Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund to run this exciting outreach project over the next 18 months.  
  
“It’s usually very difficult to source funding for extra staff time like we’ve done here – but a project of this nature really does require this input.  
  
“Initial conversations with some of our community partners around the possibility of a project like this demonstrated that this type of collaboration is exactly what our communities would like to see.  
  
“Long term, what we hope to see is much stronger connections between the museum and our fellow heritage partners around Orkney, and that more folk will know they can come to the team for advice and guidance with ideas they have.  
  
“Meantime, we’re sure there will be some great stories uncovered over the course of the project to share with the Orkney public.”  
  
As part of the project, financial support of up to £1k may be also available to community groups towards the costs of their projects, assessed on a project-by-project basis.  
  
For an initial chat, email Ellen at ellen.pesci@orkney.gov.uk  

Pictured here are Members of the Council’s Museums and wider Culture team (left to right) Digital Collections and Heritage Officer Chris Andrews; Arts Officer Emma Gee; Curator (Archaeology) Siobhan Cooke-Miller; Engagement/Exhibitions Officer Tom Muir; Culture Team Manager Nick Hewitt; and Curator (Social History) Ellen Pesci who is leading the outreach project.

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation aims to ‘improve our natural world, secure a fairer future and strengthen the bonds in communities in the UK. We unlock change by contributing everything we can alongside people and organisations with brilliant ideas who share our goals’. 
  
The Foundation is one of the largest independent grant-makers in the UK. In 2023, the Foundation provided £58.4m in funding towards a wide range of work in support of these aims. This includes additional funding to organisations they fund in response to the rising cost of living. The Foundation also provide social and impact investment for organisations with the aim of creating social and environmental impact. 
  
Find out more at www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk 
  
The  Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund is managed by the Museums Association on behalf of the  Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. To find out more about the The Esmee Fairbairn Collections Fund, contact Sarah Briggs, collections development lead, sarah@museumsassociation.org, 020 7566 7834