Connecting Barnsley’s Heritage

Thanks to the generous support of the National Lottery Heritage fund, secured via Barnsley Museums and Heritage Trust, this project has been established to celebrate Barnsley’s rich cultural heritage. Its aim is to promote and bring together all the community groups and sites in the Borough to create a ‘one-stop shop’ for heritage.

Charlotte Fairclough, a Heritage Freelancer, leads the project involving Cawthorne Jubilee Museum, Friends of Locke Park, Monk Bretton Priory and Hemmingfield Colliery Group, to name just a few. The groups are as diverse as their locations and heritage, but many were struggling to support their own meetings and district wide travel was difficult for some.

The Barnsley Heritage Connects project provided social media training and help with making publicity videos of local heritage sites and characters. The social media presence is going from strength and is a growing platform for small independent cultural groups to shout about their activities in one central digital location.

The group has already held a series of mini festivals including bell ringing at St Leonards Church in Wortley and a social and sharing event at Darfield Maurice Dobson museum which was a great success. The night included a reminiscing tour with the gramophone sounds of Gracie Fields, the story of local character Maurice Dobson and object handling sessions presented by local poet and broadcaster, Ian McMillan.

Much has been learned from visiting and creating these events and some of the objects and stories discovered are now being added to the collections at Experience Barnsley, which is currently undergoing its first major redisplay since opening.    

We would like to thank the Heritage Lottery Fund for their support which has allowed this very successful collaboration to take place.