Lottery Awards voting

From today until midday on June 20th, please vote for 'Unfolding the Quilts' on the UK Lottery Awards and help us win! Just click the voting button at the top right of this blog to go to the voting site. You can read more on the Quilt Museum's website.

Quilters worldwide can vote! You don't have to be a UK resident.

So... what's it all about? QGBI (Quilters' Guild of the British Isles) member Val Shields sums it all up very well -

...asked what lottery grant had the Museum been given. I will answer briefly. The Museum opened almost exactly three years ago with a Museum Director as its first staff member. A short time later, we heard that an application to the Lottery Heritage Fund had been successful. For an application to be successful, very full details of what will be done must be given and these must later be adhered to. The project was named 'Unfolding the Quilts' and its aim was to introduce as many people as possible to what the Museum could offer.

The (current) funding will finish this coming October and the people who have worked so hard to make a success of the Museum will be out of work. The two who were employed were Melanie Forgan whose brief was 'Education' and Virginia Hatton whose brief was 'Volunteering'. Much of the success of the museum with the general public has been due to those two young women. Melanie was behind many of the projects to make the museum 'user-friendly' to all age-groups and she was behind many of the sessions in the workroom. Veronica has had great success in recruiting volunteers to steward the exhibitions and in making display items for handling purposes, to mention just two things. I think there are now about 70 names on the volunteer list. The Lottery money was also able to fund materials and expenses incurred in progressing the project.

We need as many people as possible to vote for this - they need not be quilters or Guild members but they ought to be interested in the success of the Museum which is the only one of its kind in the UK where many museums are currently disposing of textile items or mothballing them. Success would do a great deal to raise the profile of P&Q in the UK and would bring benefits to all interested in textile crafts.

Please vote and spread the word! The voting button will remain in place on my website all the time the voting process is open and will take you directly through to the Lottery Awards site with one mouse click.

And feel free to repost this on your blog too...