Gladstone’s Library successfully secures funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden has been awarded £126,729 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for a project to help young people engage with history.

The project will empower young people (aged 16-24) to explore and discuss universal Gladstonian themes of religious tolerance, human rights, and democracy, and more challenging historical and contemporary topics such as slavery, colonialism, and minority rights.

The funds will allow Gladstone’s Library to develop and deliver a series of pilot workshops and engagement activities specially tailored for groups including high school pupils, students, and youth club members.

The focus will be on learning new things, engaging with history and heritage that is still relevant to contemporary issues, and practising how to have respectful and challenging conversations to develop and enrich learning.

The groups will also learn about Gladstone’s Library and William Gladstone – and how his views developed and changed over his lifetime and will be invited to access the Library’s collections, including historical books and archive material.

Revd Dr Andrea Russell, Warden at Gladstone’s Library said:

"We are delighted to receive support from the Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players, to facilitate a new series of learning and engagement activities for young people aged 16-24.

“We want to widen the Library’s reach and use our unique collections as a starting point for conversations and learning by working with local schools, groups, and youth organisations. 

"We hope that connecting the workshops to relevant contemporary issues and concerns will lead to informed changes in ideas and to positive actions. We are very grateful to the Heritage Fund for supporting our ambition to work with young people, and we are also incredibly thankful for the continued commitment and enthusiasm of our existing visitors, friends, and donors.

“Their support is fundamental to our ongoing success and any future developments, for example a very kind legacy donation helped us to secure this project funding from the Heritage Fund.

“Gladstone’s Library is truly a unique place to immerse yourself in the wonders of learning, research, and silent study, which is something we are totally committed to.”

With £126,729 Heritage Fund support, thanks to National Lottery players, the project at Gladstone’s Library will run for around 18 months. The Library will also conduct a series of feasibility studies working with architects, conservation officers, archivists, and suitable business and heritage consultants.

The feedback, outcomes and evaluation of this project and feasibility studies will help inform how the Library will evolve over the next five to ten years.

About Gladstone’s Library

Gladstone’s Library is a working residential Library that offers free access to a unique collection of over 150,000 printed items and books, and 450,000 archival objects, to a community of readers, researchers, and residents.  

It is often described as UK's finest residential Library, with 26 bedrooms, a restaurant, meeting rooms, and a guest lounge. It is also the UK's only Prime Ministerial Library and was built following a bequest from William Ewart Gladstone, Victorian statesman and four times Prime Minister of Great Britain. The current building, built in 1902 and designed by renowned architect John Douglas, was funded by public subscription.  

The Library’s world-famous Grade-I listed Reading Rooms house thousands of books, including the Gladstone Collection, which comprises items from Gladstone's own personal Library. It is also home to unique archival collections, making it a destination for scholars from across the globe. 

The charity’s main purpose is to maintain and develop the Library collection, and to encourage the research, writing, and debate of Gladstone’s core subjects: Theology and Spirituality, History, Politics, and Contemporary and Classical Literary Culture.  

We support established and aspiring novelists, poets, and playwrights. The Library is open to all, and our audiences range from GCSE and A level learners to PHD candidates and academic researchers. 

Visitors can access the collections and heritage, participate in literary festivals, and learn via courses, lectures, workshops, and the Library’s ever-expanding collection of books and archive materials. We also offer a range of residential scholarships for writers and researchers, guided Library tours, volunteering opportunities, and engagement events.  

Gladstone’s Library is open to the public seven days a week, for fifty weeks of the year, and is free to access. It has been recognised as the most important research Library and collection in Wales, after the National Library of Wales – it is a unique institution.  

As a registered charity we are committed to supporting writers, researchers, learners, and readers at all stages of their life and career – through access to the archives, engagement opportunities, and scholarships.

https://www.gladstoneslibrary.org/

About The National Lottery Heritage Fund

As the largest dedicated funder of the UK’s heritage, The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. 

Over the next ten years, the Heritage Fund aims to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to bring about benefits for people, places and the natural environment.  

The Heritage Fund helps protect, transform and share the things from the past that people care about, from popular museums and historic places, our natural environment and fragile species, to the languages and cultural traditions that celebrate who we are. 

The Heritage Fund is passionate about heritage and committed to driving innovation and collaboration to make a positive difference to people’s lives today, while leaving a lasting legacy for future generations to enjoy.  

Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLotteryHeritageFund 

www.heritagefund.org.uk