Headstone Manor is a finalist for a national museum award for Stories of Harrow, which handed £150,000 of a £249,028 Lottery grant straight to 16 local groups.

Headstone Manor & Museum is one of three finalists for a national museum award, for a project that gave 16 Harrow community groups the money and the training to write their own history into the borough’s museum.

The museum has been shortlisted in the Best Small Museum Project category at the Museums Change Lives Awards 2026, run by the Museums Association. The shortlisted project is Stories of Harrow. The museum announced the nomination on 10 September.

The money, and where it actually went

The project was paid for by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Its own grant record is public, and it is the figure that makes this more than a nomination notice.

The Heritage Fund awarded £249,028 to Harrow Together Ltd on 13 December 2023, under its National Lottery Grants for Heritage programme for awards of £10,000 to £250,000. Harrow Together trades as Harrow Giving, is registered charity number 1167770, and is managed by Voluntary Action Harrow.

The Museums Association’s shortlist entry says the museum ran a grant-making process that distributed £150,000 of that directly to community organisations. That is about 60p in every pound of the grant leaving the institution and going to the groups themselves.

Stories of Harrow: where the Lottery grant went Of a £249,028 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, £150,000 was distributed directly to 16 community organisations. Stories of Harrow: where the grant went National Lottery Heritage Fund award to Harrow Together Ltd, 13 December 2023 Total grant £249,028 Paid straight to community organisations £150,000 60% of the grant 16 community groups 4,700+ residents took part 3 Nov winners announced Graphic by Harrow Today. Sources: National Lottery Heritage Fund, Museums Association, Headstone Manor & Museum
Graphic by Harrow Today

What the 16 groups recorded

Stories of Harrow ran for 18 months. The museum trained participants in oral history, collections care, research and exhibition development, then the groups designed and led their own projects.

Harrow Giving’s own project page names all 16 and what each set out to record. They include:

  • Harrow African-Caribbean Association, on the Caribbean nurses recruited to the NHS after the Second World War
  • My Yard, on the Jamaican sound system scene built in Harrow from the 1970s
  • Harrow Association of Somali Voluntary Organisations, on the journalist Mahamoud Dualeh, who settled in Harrow in the 1980s and worked in Somali radio, television and the BBC World Service
  • Harrow Association of Disabled People, on how disabled people in the borough have been housed from 1965 to now
  • Srishti, digitising 35 years of Bharatanatyam Indian dance teaching from its base at Harrow Arts Centre
  • Every Person is Capable, on the 1980s hip hop jams at the Trinity Bar
  • Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, on Zoroastrian migration to England from India, Africa and Iran

The others are Bereavement Care, Oshwal Association of the UK, RCCT CIC, Families in Action Together in Wealdstone, Harrow Carers, Reviving Links, Sustaining Harmony, Unique Community Charity and Zest of Mind.

More than 4,700 residents took part in the workshops, events and heritage activities, according to the museum. The work went on show in the Stories of Harrow exhibition, which the Museums Association says opened in May 2026 across three of the museum’s gallery spaces and ran through the summer.

Cllr Janet Mote, cabinet member for community and culture, said in the museum’s announcement: “This recognition is a tribute to the residents and community organisations who shared their stories and experiences. Harrow’s strength lies in its diversity, and this project has helped ensure that more voices are represented in our borough’s history.”

Who Harrow is up against

The Best Small Museum Project category is for museums with an annual turnover below £336,000. The other two finalists are:

  • Brent Museum and Archives, next door, for Becoming Brent, a decolonising project built around its British Empire Exhibition collections
  • Museum of Transology, for Transcestry, which placed trans collections in 15 regional museums

Winners are announced at Birmingham Repertory Theatre on 3 November 2026, during the Museums Association’s annual conference.

What it means for you

The Stories of Harrow exhibition has finished its run and is no longer in the museum’s listings. Two things are still worth knowing.

The recordings, photographs and objects the 16 groups made were the point of the project, and they were gathered to stay in the borough’s collection rather than to fill one summer show. If your family, faith group or club has a Harrow story that is not in the museum, the groups above are the route in.

The museum itself is free and open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm, closed Mondays, at Headstone Recreation Ground on Pinner View, HA2 6PX. It turned 40 this year, and its current free mini-exhibition, 40 Years of Exhibitions: What’s Next?, runs in the Manor House until 3 January 2027 and covers exactly this question of how community partnerships changed what the museum puts on show.

More local days out are on our things to do in Harrow page.

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