“Open Plaques is a service that aims to find and provide data about all the commemorative ‘plaques’ (often blue and round) that can be found across the UK and worldwide.”  Definitely worth having a look at.  You can also add to the database.

Culture Grid is an online resource which brings together over one million objects from a range of libraries, museums and archives.  This has the potential to engage with new audiences who may not traditionally have visited a museum or archives.  Culture Grid

In a drive to help celebrate Wales’ wartime heritage, military defences along the cost of Pembrokeshire will be restored. The restoration is supported by the Defence of the Realm scheme, which has granted £500,000 to see the defence battery at Chapel Bay Fort restored and opened to the public.

“The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has announced an investment of £17m – treble the amount it originally set aside – in 54 projects under its Skills for the Future programme¹. This money will deliver 808 placements and adds-up to an impressive 780 years’ worth of paid training opportunities for people across the UK seeking a career in heritage. It will not only support traditional conservation training but also a wide variety of more contemporary skills, such as managing volunteers and using social media to get people involved in heritage, that will help reinvigorate and broaden the appeal of the heritage industry to job-seekers.”

A new group has been set up in Shropshire to ensure that historic churches are included within the local tourism industry. Shropshire Churches Tourism Group has produced a colour brochure featuring 77 churches, with more churches joining. The brochures are being distributed in information centres.  The churches are grouped together in three zones, a map of which will be available once the website has been completed.  The group is to help promote churches to visitors to Shropshire.

The Heritage Lottery Fund has announced that heritage tourism contributes £20.6bn to the British Economy, putting the heritage sector ahead of car manufacturing or film induistries in terms of conrtibution to the UK gross domestic product.   The report highlighting these results is ‘Investing in Success: Heritage and the UK Tourism Economy’.

Part of the funding for Hull’s new History Centre was from the Heritage Lottery Fund and was the largest grant ever given to the city, at £7.7m.  The centre will house documents such as the city’s 13th Century Royal Charter, information about Hull’s maritime history and prominent figures in literature and drama.

Refurbishing Historic School Buildings – an interesting publication from HELM.

Our sister company Planning Solutions Limited has got good coverage in Attractions Management with their plans to re-open the former Coors Visitor Centre as the National Brewery Centre.

Demolition has begun on the Mary Rose Ship Hall in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, making way for the £35m development of a new museum dedicated to the warship. A boat-shaped museum building will be built over the dry dock containing the Mary Rose, due for completion in 2012.

The Welsh Assembly Government has allocated £19m towards the development of heritage tourism in Wales.
It is largely funded by the government and a £8.5m grant from EU Convergence Funds and the project is intended to maximise the economic value of heritage by increasing the volume, length and value of visits to Wales.

Owners of castles and tower homes in Scotland have been encouraged to apply for refurbishment funding to help boost tourism. It is thought that by restoring Scotland’s historical houses tourism could be boosted in the economic downturn.

These building could be used as hotels, rented accommodation or some business capacity. Historic Scotland has begun an audit of possible sites.

It is hoped that the project will provide an online database of castles and tower houses which demonstrate the characteristics that would enable a successful scheme for restoration.

Work on a new £35m museum at the site of the Mary Rose warship is to begin this autumn after the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) approved funding for the scheme.  A £21m grant has been awarded to the Mary Rose Trust to help fund the construction of the permanent museum housing artefacts from the vessel. The new facility will house the Mary Rose within a structure resembling a black, wooden jewellery box.

The Cutty Sark, which was devastated by fire in May 2007, is set to open next summer.  The ship was undergoing a restoration project at the time of the fire, which has now added £10m to the project’s original cost of £25m.  The project will see the ship raised 3 meters above its current position and suspended so that visitors can walk underneath to see the ship’s hull.  There will also be a glass canopy meeting the ship at the waterline and covering the dry dosck with 1,000sq m space for events.

English Heritage has taken over one of the country’s largest voluntary cultural event, Heritage Open Days, which sees more than 3,500 historic properties open to the public for free during September.  Concerns were raised over the future of the event after the Civil Trust in England entered administration in April. Among the buildings expected to open as part of this years planned Heritage Open Days is the Churchill Archives Centre, in Cambridge.  This year’s Heritage Open Days will take place between 10th and 13th September.

Five National Trust for Scotland properties are set to close to the public as part of cost-cutting measures. A further 6 loss-making visited properties will also be affected by the proposed changes in 2009-10, which could result in closure or partial closure unless alternative funding sources are secured.

The Hill of Taryit Mansion House, Leith Hall House, Arduaine Garden, Inveresk Garden and  Mountain Visitor Centre are all set to close.

There are new plans that have been revealed for a family history and genealogy visitor centre in Ebbw Vale, Wales. The new centre will cost £12m and will be housed in an extension of the Grade 2 listed General Offices building. It will house the archives of the Gwent Record Office, in a purpose built space. These archives date back to the 1300’s and cover more than 5km of shelve-space, they will be fully searchable by visitors to the centre. The centre will consist of interactive exhibits, 3D technology and a large 5D cinema.  The attraction will be funded jointly by grants from the Welsh Assembly’s Heads of Valleys programme and the European Union Regional Development Fund.

The German U-Boat, U-534 has now opened as a visitor experience in Merseyside – click here to find out more.

Southampton City Council (SCC) has unveiled plans for a new attraction commemorating the story of the Titanic disaster, the first stage of a project to establish a heritage centre in the city. An application for funding, from the Heritage Lottery Fund, to contribute to the cost of the £15m Titanic Story scheme has been submitted. The heritage centre will be developed in two stages, stage one including exhibition spaces, learning spaces, catering, retail and reception facilities.
SCC are currently seeking businesses to help deliver the project.  It is expected that the first stage of the attraction will be completed by 2012, marking the centenary anniversary of the disaster.