Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded a grant of £24,000 to an exciting new project ‘Family, Farming and Tradition’ through the Young Roots Scheme. The project will trace Cornish farming and heritage from the late C19th to the present day through photography, video interviews, film and artefacts, culminating in a county-wide touring exhibition.
Explaining the Heritage Lottery Fund’s support for the project, Head of Region for the South West, Nerys Watts, commented: “Agriculture has played a key role in Cornwall’s history from the earliest times right up to the present day. We are delighted to support this project, which will enable young people from today’s local farming families to explore the traditions of their past while learning new skills, and to share their heritage with local people and visitors alike.”
Working closely with farming families and young people around Cornwall, ‘Family, Farming and Tradition’ will capture stories and memories of farming families, documenting their lives and traditions. The collated material will be archived and made accessible to the public at the Cornwall Centre, the Royal Institution of Cornwall Collections and the Cornish Audio Visual Archive’s (CAVA) website.
Commencing at the Royal Cornwall Museum on the 18th September 2010, the exhibition will then tour the Eden Project, Penlee House, Gallery and Museum, the Exchange and Lesnewth Church. The project will also be represented at the Royal Cornwall Show 2010. The touring exhibition will feature a video installation of oral history interviews conducted by Rowan Musser of CAVA and contemporary photographs of participating farms taken by photographer Sarah Chapman. These will sit alongside agricultural photographs from existing archives, providing interesting comparisons. Many of the photographs, stored at Penlee House, Gallery and Museum, the Royal Institution of Cornwall and the Cornwall Centre, remain previously unseen and provide a fascinating insight into former farming practices in Cornwall.
The award will support a partnership with Cornwall Young Farmers, providing new opportunities for members to learn about their heritage and engage in creative activities. This will include a photography competition, with winning entries to be included in the final exhibition.
Community involvement, enabled by the grant, will incorporate a number of oral history training workshops, led by CAVA. Young volunteers will develop new skills and be encouraged to conduct oral history interviews with farming families. Working alongside exhibition venues, project outreach will include focus groups, talks, activities and workshops.
Photo: Project coordinators Sarah Chapman and Rowan Musser with local farmers Charles Richards and Jason Lowry