Windrush Foundation has received a major award to lead WINDRUSH’75 programmes in 2023, thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The award funds a national project called ‘Celebrating Windrush Pioneers’ which celebrates the lives of passengers who arrived on MV Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948.
The project which starts in July 2022 will focus on the late Samuel Beaver King MBE, father of the Windrush generation. It will deliver educational resources at Key Stages 1 to 4 about his life and contributions to society. There will be a Virtual Windrush Exhibition available free online featuring 75 Windrush Pioneers. Also, an educational video documentary will show the life and contributions of Windrush passenger John Richards, now age 97. The project will publish a new Book / eBook titled ‘75 Windrush Pioneers’ and launch the Sam King Windrush Award, an Essay Writing Competitions for children up to the age of 14.
Over the next 18 months, there will be 15-minute BEN TV heritage broadcasts (uninterrupted by commercial adverts) that will reach tens of thousands of viewers in the UK and overseas. Free monthly heritage presentations and workshops (actual and virtual) will celebrate the lives and contributions of some members of the Windrush generations.
Welcoming the award, King’s granddaughter, Dione McDonald, a Director of Windrush Foundation, said: “We are very pleased about it. Our organisation was the first to have led Windrush commemorations from 1996, celebrating the pioneers who contributed to the rebuilding and prosperity of Britain after WWII. They laid the foundation for us today and we are expected also to work to make society a better place in which to live. My granddad, the late Sam King MBE, who was among the pioneers, also would have been happy with the award and the project.”
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