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Museum project receives funding

30 November 2020

Epping Forest District Museum has received an Art Fund grant of £35,000 for the ‘Bringing the Museum to You’ project.

The project will provide opportunities for the community to continue to engage with the museum in fun, interactive and accessible digital ways while the district continues to work through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The grant was awarded through the Art Fund’s Respond and Reimagine programme and will allow a reimagining of the museum’s collection and activities to give schools, care homes and the wider community access to explore their local history.

New resources

Through this project the museum will be creating exciting resources including, reminiscence boxes and school loan boxes with a mixture of traditional museum objects and digital content to allow groups to access the museum remotely.

A new app will also be created to allow families to explore the museum in an interactive way when visiting the museum and allowing the fun to continue at home as well.

Councillor Holly Whitbread, Portfolio Holder for Housing and Community Services said:

This project comes at a crucial time for the groups that Epping Forest District Museum works with on a regularly. Schools and care homes benefit greatly from the work the museum undertakes on a regular basis and this project will allow that work to continue in new and innovative ways. The app will also provide an exciting new way for families and the community to explore the museum and the amazing local history story it has to tell.

Art fund

Art Fund’s Respond and Reimagine grants offer flexible and responsive funding to help museums adapt to the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis and reimagine future ways of working.

The UK’s museums provide inspiration, joy and education, they enrich lives and bring communities closer together, but the impact of COVID-19 has been catastrophic for many.

In the last six months, Art Fund received 451 applications from organisations for its £2.25m Respond and Reimagine funding. Art Fund has found that 60% (of museums recently surveyed) worried about their survival and 92% of museums saying they need to ‘adapt and innovate’; so the charity has launched an urgent new public fundraising appeal: Together for Museums.