The awards have been made to celebrate the work of Malcolm Taylor, who was Librarian and later Director of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML) from 1979 to 2014.
The fund was established to support the development of small folk arts collections and archives, and to promote good practice in the creation and development of collections.
The 2016 awards have been made to filmmaker Stewart Morgan and collector John Earl.
Stewart is creating a production archive for the documentary film he created around George Butterworth. The archive consists of more than 12 hours of audio and video footage, featuring experts speaking about Butterworth’s life, work and the early 20th century folk song and dance revival and he will use his grant to purchase hardware to store and maintain the footage.
John has been awarded a grant to buy low acid boxes to store and preserve a collection of late 18th to early 19th century sheet music, comprised primarily of popular and music hall songs. Sharp and his contemporaries tended to pass these forms of music by when they were collecting, so this collection will allow a deeper exploration into the music enjoyed by communities of that period.
“Establishing a fund to support the development of small folk arts collections and archives seemed an appropriate way to mark Malcolm’s 35 years as director of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library as he was passionate about helping such collectors and collections.
“The purpose of these grants is to promote good practice in creation and development of collections. Both of these awards are supporting projects that will preserve folk history for future generations to enjoy and learn from and Malcolm was involved in the decision making process of who should be selected for the inaugural grants.”
Laura Smyth, Library and Archives Director
We will offer up to three grants annually of up to £300 for the development, creation and preservation of folk related materials held by individuals or small organisations. Grants can be used for anything from the purchase of archival quality packaging and remedial conservation work to courses and advice on organising, cataloguing, indexing, and preservation to best practice standards.
The 2017 round of grant awards will open for applications in March next year. Find out more
