Museum given £160k to secure its future

The Dean Heritage Centre has been awarded the funding to secure its future

A museum in the Forest of Dean has been awarded more than £160,000 in lottery funding for a renovation.

The National Lottery Fund has allocated £164,000 for the Dean Heritage Centre's "Investing in the Past, Future, and Present" project, which aims to "transform the museum".

Volunteers, local groups and schools will be able to take part in the project through "citizen science" activities, including sampling water that runs through the site.

"We want to have new galleries, develop the site, and actually make it a viable place for the future," Mark George, centre manager, said.

'Set a baseline'

"It's great news. it just sets us in the right direction for the future, he added.

"We've got bigger plans for the next two to three years as well, so this is going to give us the money to set a baseline for what we want to do.

"We rely on visitors coming in but we all know times are hard with the cost-of-living crisis so we need to have a good look at that."

Mr George said the Dean Heritage Centre's team would be speaking to local people and finding out what they would like to see at the museum, which is the "only" collection that tells the story of the Forest of Dean.

Without the funding, the museum would have been "lost forever", he said.

Otters, eels and fish make use of mill pond and brooks that run through the site, where, Mr George said, volunteers would be able to sample the water and feed the results into "real science".

The Dean Heritage Centre will also be subject to a review of its collection.

"There's no point in us saying, 'this is what we want for the future', it's a museum for the people of the Forest of Dean.

"If we want new galleries, new exhibitions, what are the great stories people want to hear, and know about?"

Surveys will also be carried out on the museum's surroundings, including the groundwater levels and biodiversity.