APPLY NOW: Find the grant application form & funding details here

TWA Digitisation Grant 2022: A look back at our previous grant winners

On 20th June 2022 the TWA Digitisation Grant opened its doors once again. This followed a short hiatus back in 2021 where time was taken to reflect and carefully consider what exactly the industry needed most and how the grant could be adjusted to help meet that need. As a result, some key changes were made. Here’s a quick look at what’s on offer this year:

• £3,000 x 4 grants
• £500 added to a 'Match Funding Pot' per application received
• Up to £1,000 in match funding can be claimed per applicant

The grant window closes 29th July 2022 with the winners announcement being made direct from the ARA Annual Conference in Chester on 1st September 2022. But we thought, with just under three weeks left to go, now would be the perfect time to revisit some of our past grant winners and hear a bit more about their experience, their projects and what winning the grant has meant for the present and future of their collections. Nathanael Liu recorded his discussions with three organisations making up winners from our 2019 grant and winners from our 2020 grant, and you can watch the videos below to find out what he discovered.

Corinthian Casuals F.C.

This project consisted of a unique collection of matchday programmes and newsletters documenting the football club’s history, back in Victorian times being referred to as ‘the game’s first global superstars’.

The project sought to protect the collection and the club’s heritage through digitisation and celebrate the club’s long and fascinating story with big plans to publish online for wider research purposes.

I would very much recommend this grant to other organisations that think it's otherwise for academic institutions. Sports club are an incredibly important part of the social fabric of communities and if people don't stop and make a permanent record of those historical moments of relevance and the people that make them happen, they can be lost to time. 

Dominic Bliss
Corinthian Casuals F.C

You can check out their website here!

Liverpool Cathedral

A monumental structure, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott himself, Liverpool Cathedral is the largest cathedral in the world and proudly still retains over 1,000 of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s work. This archive consisted of A1 and A0 loose drawings and blueprints dating right back to 1901. Quite vulnerable in their physical paper format, digitisation was pursued in order to protect the collection and to enable, for the first time, their thousands of visitors to see them on display.

It was a very good experience [working with TownsWeb Archiving], it wasn’t an easy task to transport the drawings, as you will remember! I would recommend TownsWeb to other people wanting to do digitisation projects. Let’s hope we get some more funding to do another project with you.

Val Jackson
Liverpool Cathedral

You can check out their website here!

National Brewery Heritage Trust 

The National Brewery Heritage Trust’s archive consisted of around 500,000 brewing industry related archives and artifacts spanning an incredible 250 years. There were two clear intentions behind this project: firstly to protect the archive in its physical format and, secondly, to make this available and accessible through an online digital catalogue. The grant enabled a large portion of the trust’s collection of advertising posters, maps and plans of breweries and pubs to be digitised, and they have since proceeded to digitise more of this archive in phases. You can see some of these items undergoing the digitisation process in our designated Our Work page. 

It was a very simple application, which always attracts me! There was very good communication between ourselves [and TownsWeb]…The whole process of collecting the items, the delivery back, went very smoothly considering that was actually pandemic time. We had a few hiccups, but everyone kept in touch and everything was great.

Vanessa Winston
National Brewery Heritage Trust

Explore the National Brewery Centre online collections here.

It's not too late to apply!

For more details and to apply, please visit our TWA Digitisation Grant page and be sure to get that deadline in your diary! Also, make sure to sign up to our blog for all grant related releases!

APPLY NOW: Find the grant application form & funding details here

Access the application form and for any grant and digitisation questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us. All completed applications should be submitted by 29th July at 11.59pm (BST). The winners will be announced on 1st September at the ARA Annual Conference.