New Heritage Project for Congleton to celebrate 750 year birthday

Congleton Community Projects secures National Lottery Heritage Fund support.

Congleton Community Projects has received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant of £9,200 for an exciting heritage project, to create bespoke designed and hand painted Heraldic flags to decorate the Town Centre in 2022.

The grant was made possible by money raised by National Lottery players and has ensured that we can now go ahead with the Heraldic Flag Project. Local volunteer artists will be painting the flags in Saturday workshops starting in late September and throughout October and November under the guidance of lead professional artist Petra Lea from the Electric Picture House. The flags will be sewn by a group of local needlewomen including Jenny Unsworth who was inspired by the medieval flags of Tewkesbury and thought a similar decoration would be ideal in Congleton Town Centre for celebrating 750 years since the Charter in 1272.

The Flag painting workshops will be held in various community centres across the town and everyone is invited to come along to watch the artists at work, and talk to us about ideas you might have, on how to celebrate Congleton town’s 750^th year in 2022.

Supported through The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project will enable local residents to discover the places, spaces and people who created history where they live in a special exhibition being put together by Congleton Museum which will be installed at every workshop. Young children will also have the opportunity to get creative by designing their own mini heraldic shield to take home.

Congleton Community Projects is a not for profit organisation that has been delivering community events and activities in the town for 25 years. When local residents pointed out the importance of 2022 we set about pulling together lots of community groups and organisations to start developing a programme of events to celebrate the 750 years since the signing of the Charter.

Commenting on the award, Jo Money, Manager of CCP said: “We are delighted to receive this support thanks to National Lottery players and are confident the project will enable residents to become directly involved with celebrating the heritage of the town where they live, work and play”.

About The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Using money raised by the National Lottery, we Inspire, lead and resource the UK’s heritage to create positive and lasting change for people and communities, now and in the future. www.heritagefund.org.uk.

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

For further information:

For further information Contact Jo Money, Manager of CCP: jo@congletoncommunityprojects.org  tel 07833742200

Or to volunteer as an artist contact Petra Lea, Lead artist: 

electricpicturehouse@gmail.com

Our Project Page is here:

www.congleton750.org 

...where we will share news and updates.