The West House & Heath Robinson Museum Trust in Pinner has received a £35,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for an exciting heritage project – Sustainability Following Success.  Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, the project will enable the Trust to engage consultants to advise on how to build on the Museum’s recognised achievements since it opened two and a half years ago.
  Heath Robinson, known for his wonderful drawings of complicated machines to perform simple tasks and whose name has en   tered the English language to describe any unnecessarily complex contrivance, was a talented painter, a superb illustrator and a writer of books.  The Museum, which has the largest collection of his original work in the world, displays a representative selection. By this means and by creative workshops and fun events for children, adults, families and schools, the Museum aims to inspire, educate and entertain the public.  
The project will enable us to extend our reach within the local and to the wider community.  It will bring greater opportunities for volunteering, enabling new skills to be learnt from managing the collection to marketing, from engaging with visitors to running craft workshops.  Children will benefit from more workshops covering building contraptions, art, craft-work and writing, offering them the opportunity to be more creative than allowed by the current tight school curriculum.    
Commenting on the award, Cynthia Wells, Chairman of the Trust said: “We are delighted to have received this opportunity, thanks to National Lottery players, to widen the scope of our museum and enable more people to enjoy the work of this talented artist and illustrator”.