£50k Art Fund Grant awarded

Wordsworth Grasmere awarded £50K Art Fund Grant to showcase its hidden collections

Wordsworth Grasmere has been awarded a significant £50,000 grant from Art Fund, the national charity for museums and galleries, to allow the attraction to display items from its diverse art collection.

The funding, part of a total of £1.3m awarded through the latest round of Art Fund’s Reimagine programme, will be used to increase access to the extensive range of objects in the collection at Wordsworth Grasmere.

This investment will enable the Wordsworth Trust to shine a light on the breadth and depth of its internationally important art, books and other rare items. For the first time ever, Wordsworth Grasmere will use diverse voices from a range of backgrounds to reveal highlights from its extensive art and literary collections in a bid to further inspire people to visit the attraction.

Michael McGregor, the Wordsworth Trust’s Director said: “We are incredibly grateful to Art Fund for this generous support. Our visitor research shows that the introductory film shown before entering Dove Cottage is consistently one of our most popular features. This inspired us to expand our use of film and we will be utilising the grant funding to create more films that can be accessed by everyone via our website and social media channels. Essentially this will make our collections available to enjoy on a global level.”

He added: “These new films will help us reach or broader and more diverse audience and hopefully in turn inspire them to visit in person. Wordsworth Grasmere is far more than Dove Cottage or the story of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Our collections include remarkable art, rare books, and archival treasures that deserve far wider public visibility.”

Art Fund research shows that more than half of museums cited a lack of funding as a barrier to being able to showcase their vast collections. Wordsworth Grasmere faces similar challenges. The new funding will help bring these stories to the forefront through a collaborative film project featuring a range of voices and perspectives.

In addition to having the world’s most important collection of Wordsworth manuscripts Wordsworth Grasmere is also home to several rare editions by Byron, Coleridge, Keats and Mary Wollstonecraft, alongside a first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Meanwhile prized artworks total over 9,000 items from major artists such as John Constable and J.M.W. Turner.