University of Gloucestershire Project Wins Community Award

A University of Gloucestershire led project has been recognised with a prestigious local voluntary sector award.

The Forest of Dean Writers Collection Project received ‘Highly Commended’ in the Community Organisation category at the Forest Voluntary Action Forum annual awards ceremony.

In partnership with the Dean Heritage Centre, the project aims to create a unique collection of literary objects from Forest of Dean authors that spans 200 years of the Forest’s literary heritage.

For the past eighteen months, volunteers have been collating more than 3,000 artifacts donated to the museum that make up the new collection. Along with members of the project stakeholder group, the volunteers have clocked up more than 1,000 hours of voluntary work on the initiative so far.

Dr Jason Griffiths, Project Manager for the University, and Nicola Wynn, Collections Officer at the Dean Heritage Centre, collected the award at the event held in Cinderford.

Dr Griffiths, from the University’s School of Arts, Culture and Environment, said: “It is an incredible achievement to win the Highly Commended award from the Forest Voluntary Action Forum and is a testament to the work of the volunteers at the Forest of Dean Writers Collection Project.

“Our volunteers have shown incredible dedication in assembling this remarkable collection of over 3,000 literary artefacts. My thanks extend to Nicola and to Robyn Timmins, Collections Assistant at the Dean Heritage Centre, who have trained our volunteers in museum cataloguing and conservation skills. And of course, special thanks to our dedicated group of volunteers, without whom this project would not have been possible.”

The project, made possible by National Lottery Players through funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, will continue until March 2026. By this time all the manuscripts, notebooks, artworks, and ephemera relating to Forest authors and poets will have been formally entered into the museum collection, with conservation undertaken and details recorded on the catalogue database.

Upon completion, local schools will have access to the collection’s literary, historical, and dramatic content, to give their cross-curriculum work a local flavour and raise literary aspirations. The collection will also become a major part of the Dean Heritage Centre’s future permanent displays and exhibitions.