£4.5 million National Lottery boost for communities to celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee across the UK

Today (Monday 21 March), £4.5 million of National Lottery funding has been awarded to communities across the UK so they can come together to celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK, has revealed the 91 impactful community projects set to receive a share of the money.

This includes sporting activities for people with acquired brain injuries (ABIs) in the west of England, horticultural support for veterans in Wales, skills sharing amongst generations in Scotland to reduce waste and pollution, and multicultural community events in south London.

This vital funding has been awarded from The Platinum Jubilee Fund, which was launched in November last year as a £3.5 million programme with grants of up to £50,000 available to 70 organisations, celebrating Her Majesty’s 70 years of public service.

As the Platinum Jubilee forms part of #Celebrate2022, a significant year of celebration and national pride, The National Lottery Community Fund has committed an additional £1 million to a further 21 community groups to ensure as many people as possible can come together to mark this momentous occasion.

Headway Worcestershire has been awarded £50,000 to host the world’s first ‘Acquired Brain Injury Games’. This world first will see people with ABIs taking part in a series of sporting events testing their physical attributes and building on their life skills, creative abilities and cognitive awareness. With local schools, colleges and universities being invited to take part, this will raise awareness of ABIs in the wider community. The inaugural ‘Queen Elizabeth II Games for People with an Acquired Brain Injury’ will take place this summer in Worcester, and is in response to what the charity sees as an injustice within sport, as people experiencing ABIs are unable to compete in the Paralympic Games if they show no obvious physical disability.

Mandie Fitzgerald, Chief Executive at Headway Worcestershire, said: “The Acquired Brain Injury Games will provide a fun way to acknowledge the wonderful skills and talents of the people we support, while also ensuring adults with an acquired brain injury know about the valuable support Headway Worcestershire and other charities offer in the community. We would like to say a heartfelt thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund for helping us stage this event as part of our Platinum Jubilee celebrations, and for giving us the opportunity to educate and inform the wider community about the impacts of an acquired brain injury.”

Thanks to £50,000, Valley Veterans in Rhondda Valley, Wales will support its network of over 140 veterans through horticultural activities involving horses and gardening. The group’s Equi-Growth project will help improve people’s mental and physical health and wellbeing, whilst reducing loneliness and isolation. Veterans will also learn new skills by looking after the horses, and on the group’s allotment they will work together to tend to flowers and vegetables, which can be used to cook healthy meals at home.

Croydon Refugee Community in south London is another group to benefit. It has received a £50,000 grant to bring together all ages from ethnic minority communities to share and celebrate their heritage, cultural traditions and dishes, as a way of marking the Platinum Jubilee. This will create connections across generations, cultures, languages and walks of life to share skills and learn from each other, reducing loneliness and isolation and improving wellbeing.

In Scotland, the Group for Recycling in Argyll and Bute Trust (GRAB Trust) has received almost £50,000 to bring young people and the older generation together to reduce waste in the local area. They will share skills with each other that benefit the environment – older people will show young people how to bake, upcycle clothes and furniture, and grow vegetables, whereas young people will bring their knowledge of veganism to the table, as well as the idea of getting friends together to share and swap unwanted clothes. Volunteers will run pop-events covering these themes to get the wider community involved. This will not only reduce pollution and waste going to landfill, but build friendships between generations that will last long after the Platinum Jubilee.

Graham Love, General Manager at the GRAB Trust, said: “The Platinum Jubilee Fund will make a huge difference to people across Argyll and Bute in the next two years. The GRAB Trust will be working in communities in celebration of the Platinum Jubilee and help reduce the volume of waste going to landfill. Research* shows 30% of adults throw away household items that could have been donated, sold or reused and a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds don’t actually know how to recycle or donate. Our ‘Waste No More!’ project is for everyone, young and old - bringing people together to share their skills across generations. We are looking forward to getting everyone making, mending, upcycling, repairing and repurposing - making the most of existing resources and caring for the planet.”

Blondel Cluff CBE, Chair of The National Lottery Community Fund and Chair of the UK Funding Committee, said: “We are proud to play a key role in this momentous year of celebration across the United Kingdom. Thanks to National Lottery players, we are supporting organisations up and down the country that are making a great difference and bringing purpose and pride to their communities. It is these community groups that perfectly encapsulate the spirit of this Platinum Jubilee year, by creating a legacy of positive change that allows people to prosper and thrive.”

Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, said: “Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee is a wonderful opportunity to bring people together and this funding will play an important part helping more than 90 community groups get involved to celebrate 70 years of dedicated service.”

The Platinum Jubilee weekend will also be celebrated with The Big Jubilee Lunch from Thursday 2 – Sunday 5 June, 2022. Part of a two-year programme of activities supported by £2.3 million of National Lottery funding, this Jubilee-focused version of the annual Big Lunch event will bring thousands of communities together and help people celebrate the Platinum Jubilee while getting to know their neighbours.

The National Lottery Community Fund distributes money raised by National Lottery players, who raise more than £30 million** each week for good causes across the UK.

Grants of up to £10,000 from The National Lottery Awards for All programme – which gives out almost £80 million of National Lottery funding in all parts of the UK each year - are still available for community-led events throughout 2022 to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee year.

To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk