Community Research Grants

The national blue plaque scheme celebrates people who have made a significant contribution to human welfare or happiness. We want to ensure the plaques we commission reflect the broad range of people who have made these contributions.

We are providing funding for groups and organisations to work with underrepresented communities and partner with a researcher or historian so that they can find out more about the people who lived within their community and help bring their stories to life.

What are Community Research Grants?

The aim is for the funded research to pave the way for communities to submit nominations for national blue plaques in the future. We also hope to create opportunities for the research to be shared with local communities and shine a light on significant people from their area or heritage.

This funding is specifically for research taking place outside of Greater London, or on projects where the potential national blue plaque would be installed outside of Greater London. It offers grants of £3,000 to £7,000 per project, which must be completed by July 2025.

National blue plaque scheme nominations submitted as a result of funded research will be assessed in line with all other nominations made that year. This may not necessarily result in a national blue plaque, but we expect that through funding this work, we will see an increase in the diversity of people nominated.

Our current round of funding closed on 28 July 2024.

Projects awarded funding

Braille and Beyond

Organisation: Dream Time Creative CIC
Location: Wakefield
Project cost: £6,500
Start date: 1 October 2024                    
Completion date: 31 October 2025

'Braille and Beyond' is part of the Forgotten Women of Wakefield campaign to raise awareness of how women from our past have directly influenced the social, political, economic, cultural, creative, spiritual and literary landscape of Wakefield.

The project will research 2 women, Edith Wright and Emily Fennell, who encouraged societies to view blind people as having a place of purpose, instigating holistic and fulfilling workshops which upskilled, and kept upskilling blind people to enable them to work which led to the founding of Wakefield’s first Institute for the Blind.

Braille and Beyond will offer women in Wakefield the opportunity to learn research skills and share their own lived experience through group workshops.

Carlos Trower

Organisation: Myers-Insole Local Learning CIC
Location: Bristol
Project cost: £7,000
Start date: 1 October 2024                    
Completion date: 31 January 2025

Carlos Trower (1850 to 1889), known as 'The African Blondin', was one of the world's greatest high-rope walkers at the height of their death-defying popularity. Carlos fled institutional slavery and civil war in America to begin his solo career in England, where he overcame many dangerous obstacles while challenging the prejudices held by Victorian audiences.

Carlos married Annie Emmett, daughter of a London coachman and they moved to Bristol's historic Christmas Steps. Working with partners and communities in Bristol participants will gain a deeper understanding of the history of this neighbourhood and aspects of the social context relevant to their streets and homes and be encouraged to come together to celebrate a lesser-known hero who fought for social equity.