£24,000 grant to enhance visitor experience of Shakespeare

THE Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has been awarded a grant of £24,000 to enhance the visitor experience at the five Shakespeare homes for blind and partially sighted.

The grant, jointly funded through a partnership between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the Wolfson Foundation, will enable the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to develop new audio resources to help blind and partially sighted visitors explore more of the content at its historic Shakespeare houses, and in its digital collections.

The audio initiative is part of the Trust’s wider “Equal Access for All” project to improve the quality of welcome and support for visitors with differing access needs.

Becky Cund, director of human resources at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust said, “This grant is a significant boost to our plans to transform our presentation and access to welcome everyone, irrespective of their individual access needs.

"With the opening of our first fully-accessible property at Shakespeare’s New Place last August, we are now looking forward to working with partners, community groups and funders to develop access programmes at all the Shakespeare houses wherever possible.”

Compton Verney House Trust has banked £36,000 to redisplay of Compton Verney’s important collection of British Folk Art.

Its grant is in memory of Giles Waterfield, the McKitterick Prize winning novelist, art historian and curator who died in November.

Matt Hancock, Minister for Digital and Culture, said: “Our museums and galleries are among the best in the world and we should be rightly proud of these institutions.

"We want people to be able to enjoy world-leading culture wherever they live and whatever their background. These grants will make an important contribution toward increasing access to their wonderful collections and improving the visitor experience at museums right across the country.

“I applaud the Wolfson Foundation’s generosity in once again matching the Government’s investment pound for pound in this important work.”