Portadown Heritage Tours have received a grant of £10,000 from the Community Heritage Fund for local heritage project entitled CATCH UP.

We are delighted to be one of

  • 29 community heritage projects from across Northern Ireland have been awarded grants totalling £241,900

  • The Community Heritage Fund is being distributed by The National Lottery Heritage Fund on behalf of the Department for Communities

  • The fund is part of the £29million Executive allocation to support the arts, culture, heritage and language sectors in Northern Ireland.

We have been awarded £10,000 through the Community Heritage Fund, to help develop and protect heritage through these difficult times.

The Community Heritage Fund, which The National Lottery Heritage Fund is delivering on behalf of the Department for Communities, will help people in Northern Ireland to connect with their local heritage.

Competition was high and we are grateful to be one of only 29 projects from across Northern Ireland, to have been awarded a share of just under a quarter of a million pounds. This money was earmarked to help people to strengthen connections with the heritage in their community.

It has been a difficult year and like all community and voluntary sector organisations we have felt it acutely. One one hand we see finding and services disrupted and our Centre forced to close, yet we have never been more busy as people really struggle through lockdown.

Therefore it was with some courage and a lot of vision that our Board decided to invest time and effort in breaking new ground. Investing in heritage, in essence investing in the past seems counter-intuitive at a time when we are struggling to secure our future but we believed it was the right thing to do.

We are delighted and thankful that the the Department for Communities and The National Lottery Heritage Fund shared our vision and accepted the logic of the case we presented and provided this funding.  

Thanks to this grant, we can reach out to new audiences in our community and help them to better understand the heritage on our doorstep.

It will also help us plan for the future embedding heritage into our work generally and enabling us to take a more strategic sustainable approach.

Finally it will enable us to harness new technology and techniques to bring the past to life and to reconnect our community with their rich heritage.

The Community Heritage Fund is part of the £29 million Executive allocation that was made to the Department for Communities to support the arts, culture, heritage and language sectors which have been severely impacted by COVID-19.  This is the latest package of support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the heritage sector across the UK throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Last year, the organisation committed over £600million of National Lottery and Government funding to more than 1,500 heritage organisations, along with expertise and advice

Paul Mullan, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said:

“Our local places have become more important than ever throughout this pandemic, and through this fund, we hope to encourage people to get to know their local heritage that bit better.

“We’re grateful to the Department for Communities for providing the funding and we’re delighted to fund a diverse range of projects which will make a huge impact on many communities across Northern Ireland.”

To find out more about The National Lottery Heritage Fund, go to: www.heritagefund.org.uk