The Trustees of NMCT met in early December and, as usual, considered applications for the conservatin of a huge variety of collections including police archives, family and estate collections, company archives - including the pre-emintent Minton Archive - and the Diocese of London Unfit Consistory Court Books before 1600. Trustees awarded a total of over £130,000 in grants towards projects that have a total value of just under £300,000.
The next deadline for the submission of applications is 1st October 2015 and the results will be announced in early December. If you want to plan ahead, the deadline after that is 1st April 2016.
This autumn, The Islamic Manuscript Association, in partnership with the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), will hold the first in a series of intensive short courses on cultural property protection (CPP) in Whitehall, London from 5 to 7 October 2015.
The NMCT Trustees held their June meeting in Oxford this year, enabling them to visit the new conservation studios in the Bodleian's Weston Library and also to visit the Oxford Conservation Consortium, where various NMCT funded conservation projects are in progress.
West Dean College and the British Library are collaborating to offer short courses: forthcoming topics include pest prevention and photographic conservation.
There is still time to book a place at the fundraising training days being organised as part of the Giving Value initiative, which is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
You can find out about some useful fundraising resources by following this link.
Conservators are increasingly spreading the word about their work and providing updates on their project using the blogosphere. You might like to look at some of the blogs that feature projects that are currently being funded or have been supported in the past, such as.....
Dr Norman James and Caroline Checkley-Scott have joined NMCT as Trustees.
Norman has provided advice to NMCT for two decades, his advice along with that of his curatorial and conservation colleagues at The National Archives, has informed all decisions on grant applications. Norman has also made many visits to NMCT applicants providing advice on strategy and development. Following Norman's retirement from The National Archives, he has accepted an invitation to become a Trustee in his own right.
At their meeting on 1st December 2014 the Trustees awarded grants for the conservation of collections as varied as the archives of the South Wales Miners Federation, the Bankes Archive of Kingston Lacy and a rare Latin-Chinese dictionary.
During 2014 grants totalling nearly £170,000 have been awarded to institutions across the UK. Grants totalling nearly three-quarters of a million pounds have been awarded by NMCT since 2010.
