Lapworth redevelopment gathers pace with latest grant announcement

The redevelopment of the University of Birmingham's Lapworth Museum of Geology has taken another leap forward with the news that the project has received a £100,000grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Wolfson Foundation. The Lapworth, which is in the midst of a £2.5m redevelopment project which will create innovative new exhibitions and allow the display of one of the most outstanding rock, fossil and mineral collections in the UK, is one of 25 museums nationwide to benefit from the round of funding. The museum will explore life over the past 3.4billion years, covering mass extinctions and evolutionary changes. A host of fossils from around the West Midlands will show how the area has changed from a tropical sea to desert to ice sheets over a 450 million-year period. Grants announced today are designed to fund renovation and improvement projects in museums and galleries, to increase access and enhance the display of exhibits. The £2.5 million cost of the redevelopment is also being funded by a major Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant of more than £1.5m as well as by University of Birmingham alumni, and other grant awarding bodies, trusts and foundations. Jon Clatworthy, the Director of the Lapworth Museum of Geology at the University of Birmingham said: "We are delighted to be in receipt of this grant which will support our redevelopment project, making the large and nationally important collections of the Lapworth Museum at the University of Birmingham much more accessible to the community.