There was a passing mention of the Heritage Lottery funding for The Full English project in the EFDSS announcement here of the Arts Council England funding, but here are more details, via Musical Traditions:

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has given the green light to support the EFDSS' The Full English project. Development funding of £30,000 has been awarded by HLF to help progress their plans, which will see EFDSS work with five other nationally important English folk music and dance archive collections to tell the story of traditional, rural and working class culture in 20th-century England. This means that the project can now progress to the second stage of the HLF application process, with up to two years to submit more detailed plans and apply for the full grant of just over £615,400.

The project will carry out essential conservation work, digitise the collections and join them through a single web portal, allowing online public access to the collections for the first time. An educational programme, which draws upon and is inspired by the collections, will be run in 21 different locations in England.

The Full English project will join up a complete set of the most important folk music collections in England - those of Harry Albino, Lucy Broadwood, Clive Carey, Percy Grainger, Maud Karpeles, Frank Kidson, Thomas Fairman Ordish, Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Alfred Williams - through a single web portal, allowing public access to 39,179 items via 70,862 individually digitised pages. This will involve partnership between six archives at English Folk Dance and Song Society; The British Library; Clare College, Cambridge; The Folklore Society at University College London; the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; and the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.

The collections will form the foundation for learning and participation programmes to be run across nine regions of England which it is estimated will involve over 20,000 people of all ages. The project will comprise projects with children and young people, work with teachers and other arts educationalists; partnering with local arts organisations to deliver community projects comprising participatory events and concerts; archive and history projects and training of volunteers in archive and conservation work.

15.4.11

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Wow. Talk about effects beyond the neighborhood of C. Sharp House! Very exciting. I suppose it's important to note that this is funding for project development plans, with full funding still to be applied for and granted.

Wishing them well as it goes forward...

~ Becky in Long Beach