Heritage and museums expert Focus Consultants is playing a key role in the redevelopment of St Fagans: National History Museum in Cardiff.The company helped the project to secure £11.5 million - the largest ever grant award in Wales by the Heritage Lottery Fund - and has now been appointed project managers and cost managers for the scheme at St Fagans open air museum near Cardiff.
“This is a prestigious development at what is already a great attraction,” said Richard Aston, partner at Focus Consultants, which is based at Phoenix Business Park, Nottingham, and has branches in London, Leicester, Lincoln and in Boston.
“The team at Focus Consultants is delighted to be involved in such a significant and inspirational project.” Established as a museum in 1948, St Fagans was the first open-air museum in the UK. It currently tells the story of how the people of Wales lived, worked and spent their leisure time over the last 500 years.
St Fagans: National History Museum is the second most visited open-air museum in Europe, and Wales’ most visited heritage attraction with more than 600,000 visitors per year.
It is also the largest provider in Wales of learning outside the classroom with 360,000 family visitors and 85,000 formal education visitors.
The Creu Hanes - Making History project aims to create an exciting new visitor experience integrating national collections of archaeology and social history together in an open-air museum for the first time anywhere. It will explore over 200,000 years of Welsh history.
Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales has drawn up a £25 million plan to establish St Fagans as Wales’ National History Museum.
The Welsh Government has already earmarked funding support of £6 million, and now the Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded £11.5 million for the development.
The museum is also launching its own appeal.
Specialists from Focus Consultants’ economic development and funding team drafted the business plan and economic assessment for the Heritage Lottery Fund bid. Detailed designs are now being drawn up for the development, with work expected on site in September 2013. The museum is located in the grounds of the Grade I-listed St Fagans Castle, one of the finest surviving Elizabethan manor houses in Wales.
The museum features more than 40 historic buildings that have been relocated from different parts of Wales; these include a several farmhouses, a terrace of ironworkers’ houses and a Medieval church.
Focus Consultants specialises in creative approaches to securing funding packages and delivering high quality projects across the Midlands and the UK.
Focus has secured more than £900 million of grant assistance, and delivered more than £1 billion of projects and programmes since 1994.
For more information visit www.focus-consultants.co.uk
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