‘Looking Through a Lens: Preserving and presenting the past through digitisation’ has won Heritage Lottery Fund support. Kendal Museum has been awarded a grant of £53,400 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the digitisation of two of its important collections; the geology and herbarium. This exciting and innovative project is being led by Curator Manager Carol Davies and Digital Imaging Consultant Tony Riley.
The project will take place over a two year period starting in October 2014 to September 2016 with the photographing of these rare specimens in the Museum’s collections. A touring exhibition of the completed photographs will then be shown in various venues in Cumbria. There is also the opportunity for volunteers, the community and school groups to get involved with the project in workshops, family days and seed planting. This will help with developing links with the wider community and bring new audiences to the Museum.
Carol Davies Curator Manager of Kendal Museum says “the museum team are absolutely thrilled to be awarded the Heritage Lottery Funding to digitise our collections. We are looking forward to Tony bringing these artefacts that belong to the public to life to a global standard, the first to do so in Cumbria. Our direction and energies as a teaching museum working with Kendal College together with our students are now defined for the next two years, bringing two of our most precious and delicate treasured collections to the public attention”.
Sara Hilton, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund North West said, “This is an engaging project which will actively involve people with Kendal Museum’s important mineral and herbarium collections. Volunteers and the wider local community will have great fun while learning about the collections, and HLF is delighted to be able to help people connect with their natural heritage.”