The Heritage Lottery Fund has made 115 awards totalling over £11 million to projects related to the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade and the slave trade generally.
Five of these have been in the North East (one completed project and four approved projects). They are:
£40,300 to Durham University Archives for Learning for a larger project which includes an element on the slave trade. (Completed)
£50,000 to Tyne and Wear Museums for Remembering Slavery; an exhibition showcasing objects, photographs, paintings and documents from the Museum’s collections related to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. (Approved)
£49,400 to Stockton Museums Service for ‘Manacles and Money’. (Approved)
£49,000 to the Black History Consortium for their Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of Slavery in 2007. (Approved)
£17,500 to Identity on Tyne for ‘Mapped Roots’. (Approved). This project was funded in collaboration with Arts Council England, which has awarded a further £20,000.
So far, Arts Council England has made a total of 40 grants to bicentenary projects totalling £1,282,354. Two of these projects are in the North East: the Mapped Roots project and Changing Perspectives, a two year study of Black families and their stories of migration into the North East, which has received £5,000 for its first stage.
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) have so far made 17 grants totalling £81,900 across the UK. These include two MLA North East Strategic Commissioning Grants. The first for £10,000 to the Literary and Philosophical Society to conduct a mapping exercise to identify and list slavery related archives and documents held by four key record offices and libraries in the region. The second for £10,000 to the Northumberland Museum Archives and Country Park and Durham University Library Archives Special Collections to create a number of e-learning packages focusing on slavery for use in schools across the North East region.
The Awards for All grants programme funded by the Big Lottery Fund with the Arts Council, Heritage Lottery Fund and Sport England have so far made 23 grants totalling £151,641 to projects to mark the bicentenary across England and Wales. None of these have been in the North East.