A grant of £132,880 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund means Wentworth Woodhouse can push forward with its digital goals, grow its team and engage more young people with their local history and culture.
The 250-year-old stately home set up a volunteer Digital Team to keep in touch with its supporters in 2020, during pandemic lockdowns.
A dozen decidedly un-techy volunteers stepped up to learn how to make short films about life at ‘the Big House’ and get them online.
They gained thousands of hits and viewers all over the world. Wentworth Woodhouse now has its own YouTube channel, with over 5,000 subscribers and the volunteer Digital Team now has 25 members, aged 20 to 80 (www.youtube.com/c/wentworthwoodhouse1).
Their work promotes Wentworth Woodhouse and charts its Capital Works repair and restoration projects and has impressed not only the public, but government ministers and funders.
Twenty young people took part in Children’s Capital of Culture Trainee Creative Producer programmes at the mansion in 2022 and 2023, and their success sparked ambitions to develop the idea.
Some of the award to Wentworth Woodhouse will pay for a digital specialist to lead the team for two years. The new Digital Lead will develop a much-needed strategy to expand the use of digital across the organisation and manage the Trust’s new Perception Busters Project, which will see two young people become Trainee Creative Producers at Wentworth Woodhouse for a year.
The two trainees will be funded by the Children’s Capital of Culture traineeship programme through Rotherham Council.
They will create four films, with production costs being funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant.