Attending the Sowing Seeds LAG this evening where the Cranborne Chase AONB are presenting their bid for a countryside centre

Sowing SEEDS covers the Community Partnerships Executive North Dorset (CPEND) area of North and East Dorset and the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), who working together originally secured £2.85 million (as a result of a national review on all LAGs during 2011, the revised programme allocation is now £1.944M for the lifetime of the programme) to improve the economic wellbeing of the area with funding available until the end of 2013. The funding is being delivered through the Local Action Group, a Group that wants to support your project ideas.

The AONB team, with the support of the AONB partnership, have assessed the feasibility of creating a multipurpose ‘countryside centre’ that would provide vocational training courses, special interest courses, environmental education, volunteering opportunities and a range of visitor opportunities to explore the surrounding countryside and are biding to Sowing SEEDS for this finance.

Wyvern Heritage and Landscape Consultancy have been aiding the AONB in putting together the funding bid for this project and gathering evidence.

Presenting today the historic character areas project to the North Wessex Downs AONB council of partners

The North Wessex Downs AONB council of partners oversees the implementation of the  management plan. This project will allow the AONB to use existing Historic landscape datasets more effectively.

Check out the WSHC guide to dating old photographs

How often do we discover old photographs or family albums tucked away or which have recently come into our possession, but which frustratingly contain little or no information about their subjects? It is possible to discover more about these images than meets the eye, if you know what to look out for.
Check out the guide on the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre Blog to find out more

http://www.wshc.eu/blog/discovering-a-little-more-than-meets-the-eye-dating-photographs.html

Explore your local archaeology and history during the Festival for British Archaeology

CBA Festival of British Archaeology 2012: Saturday 14 to Sunday 29 July

The Festival showcases the very best of British archaeology, by presenting over 750 special events organised and hosted by museums, heritage organisations, national and countryside parks, universities, local societies, and community archaeologists across the UK. You don’t have to be an archaeologist to join in - the Festival gives everyone the opportunity to learn about their local heritage, see archaeology in action, and get hands on with history.

http://festival.britarch.ac.uk/

New CBA commissioned highlights low levels of ethnic diversity in the historic environment sector

Those involved in the historic environment sector need to take more action to ensure success in developing the ethnic diversity of its work and volunteer force.

This is the conclusion of a ground-breaking research report, launched today, which examined ethnic diversity within the historic environment workforce. The report which was commissioned by the Council for British Archaeology Diversifying Participation Working Group and funded by English Heritage identified barriers to participation for minority ethnic groups in education, volunteer schemes and the workforce. The report also made a number of recommendations to overcome diversity issues through better data collection, greater profiling of ethnic minority involvement and improvement in recruitment processes and professional practices.

See http://www.britarch.ac.uk/news/120620-diversityreport for more information

Summary of responses on 'heritage tax' published

http://www.theheritagealliance.org.uk/

HM Revenue and Customs published its Summary of Responses to the consultation on the 'heritage tax' - the Budget proposal to levy VAT on approved alterations to listed buildings.

The Heritage Alliance has been campaigning on this issue since March; we are going through the Government's response very carefully, and will publish a statement on our website shortly.

818 of the 1493 responses to the VAT consultation (which also included measures relating to sports drinks, hairdressers' chairs, etc) related to the 'heritage tax' - the highest number of responses across all the measures in the consultation.

Attended the first meeting of the Wiltshire HLC project - information on this project is available via the Wiltshire history centre website

This project has been sponsored by English Heritage and will run for three years, starting in April 2012 and finishing in March 2015. It will examine the whole of Wiltshire (including Swindon Borough) and is being carried out in collaboration with a range of other organisations including Wiltshire Council, Swindon Borough Council, National Trust, Natural England and the Environment Agency.

As part of this process there will be several consultation stages where the information produced will be reviewed and analysed, and contributions made by project stakeholders.

All of this research will go towards producing a detailed and interactive digital map, descriptions and photographs of the landscapes visible across the county, analysis of archaeology present in the landscape and so much more!

The project also intends to integrate the historic landscape character studies that have already been produced for the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs AONB (http://www.historiclandscape.co.uk/index.html) and the North Wessex Downs AONB (http://www.westberks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=12848).

See
http://www.wshc.eu/about-wshc/archaeology/581.html