Egham Museum’s 2020 Visions grant success
The Egham Museum Trustees are delighted to announce that Egham Museum has received an Arts Council England (ACE) grant of £49,951 for an exciting community arts project titled “2020 Visions: Changes in Times and Perceptions.”
Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, the year-long residency and community art project will be guided by the artist in residence, Estella Castle. Estella’s recent work includes “The People’s Pageant” a work commissioned by the National Trust, “Ask the Fellows Who Cut Hay” commissioned to celebrate John Constable’s painting “The Hay Wain”, and the upcoming “No Shepherdess/No Pastoral” to be exhibited at the Wallace Collection this Spring. While Egham Museum has often used arts as a means to explore history, this is the first time we have had a resident artist. This will bring and exciting new dynamic and approach to how history is explored and interpreted.
‘2020 Visions’ will include a co-curated installation and exhibition using our John Hassell watercolour collection, painted in the 1820’s, as a backdrop for exploring hidden stories. It will allow us to better interpret, catalogue and conserve these works, making them an accessible starting point for discussions and engagement. We will also run a programme of talks, workshops and activities where members from the community will be invited to participate and help shape what the final installation and exhibition should look like – what stories should we tell, how can we tell them, from whose perspective, and why is this important? We will do this through the exploring endangered crafts, once prevalent in the Georgian period, and are excited to be working with the Heritage Crafts Association. Further project partners are the Runnymede Access Liaison Group and VocalEyes.
The project received strong feedback from Arts Council England’s grants assessors, with Relationship Manager Museums, Joseph Minden stating the project “shows what ambition and good planning can make possible for a local history museum like Egham.”
Commenting on the award, Curator Sarah Corn said:
“This is an exciting development for the Museum as we build on previous successful projects such as ‘Magna Carta in Egham’ and ‘Suffrage in Egham’. As always, the community are at the heart of what we do and the project provides us with the resources and support to create an inclusive art work exploring stories from different times and perspectives. We look forward to working with Estella and shining a light on some of these forgotten heritage crafts and local histories.”
Keep up to date with this project and other news by following Egham Museum on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #EghamVisions.
About Arts Council England (ACE)
Arts Council England is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and have strategic responsibility for arts, museums and libraries. They champion, develop and invest in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives. ACE support activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections.
Follow @ace_national on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
