The Pilgrim Trust is an independent charitable grant-making trust in the United Kingdom. The Trust's aims are to improve the life chances of the most vulnerable and preserve the best of the past for the public to enjoy. The Trust awards approximately £3 million worth of grants each year to charities which are working to preserve the UK’s heritage and social change. It is based in London and is a registered charity (no. 206603) under English law. It was founded in 1930 with a two million pound endowment by Edward Harkness, an American philanthropist. The trust's inaugural board were Stanley Baldwin, Sir James Irvine, Sir Josiah Stamp, John Buchan and Hugh Macmillan; its first secretary was former civil servant, Thomas Jones.

Founding

Edward Harkness was an American philanthropist, whose family traced its roots to Dumfriesshire and who retained a lifelong love of Great Britain. Prompted by admiration for the UK's contribution to the First World War, and recognising the difficulties of its people during the Great Depression, he donated £2 million to create the Pilgrim Trust. The preamble to the trust deed was written by John Buchan, and reads:

Highlights from history

Recording Britain

In 1940 the Trust funded a scheme "Recording the changing face of Britain" established by the Committee for the Employment of Artists in Wartime, part of the Ministry of Labour and National Service. Led by Sir Kenneth Clark, director of the National Gallery, it employed artists to record the home front in Britain, running until 1943. It was motivated by a desire to record and reflect the landscape, already undergoing a period of rapid change through urbanisation and changes in agriculture and further threatened by bombing and other effects of war. Some of the sixty three artists directly commissioned included John Piper, Sir William Russell Flint, Charles Knight, Malvina Cheek, George Hooper, Clifford Ellis, Raymond Teague Cowern and Rowland Hilder. A further thirty four artists contributed to the final total of over 1500 works. The collection was donated to the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

by the Trust in 1949. Over a hundred works comprising the "Recording Scotland" part of the same scheme are held at the Museum Collections Unit,

University of St Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...

The National Cataloguing Scheme

In 2006, the Trust partnered with the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and The National Archives to support the cataloguing of important archives to which people had little or no access. In the pilot year, 12 grants were awarded and it was deemed a success. The Pilgrim Trust continued this grant programme with The National Archives and in 2017 renamed the grant programme to Archives Revealed. In 2021, the Wolfson Foundation partnered with the Pilgrim Trust and The National Archives to continue Archives Revealed and a total of £1 million went towards 'the only funding stream in the UK dedicated to cataloguing and unlocking archives'.

The Pilgrim Trust today

Today, the Trust makes grants of roughly £3 million in grants to charities and other public bodies that focus on preserving the UK's heritage or on bringing about social change. It also funds activities such as research and advocacy that catalyse wider structural changes. Today, the Trust's main areas of operation are providing grants for young women's mental health; preserving and conserving significant historic buildings, structures, objects, works of art, collections and records; and researching, advocating and developing work in their areas/sectors of interest.

Trustees

As of 2023, the trustees of the Trust are: * Sir Mark Jones (chairman) * Asif Afridi * David Barrie CBE * Caroline Butler * Dr Anna Keay OBE * Alice La Trobe Weston * Atul Patel MBE * Matthew Ridley * Marie Staunton CBE * Dr Alexander Sturgis * Cullagh Warnock * Joan Winterkorn

References

External links

*{{official, http://www.thepilgrimtrust.org.uk/ Charities based in London Heritage organisations in the United Kingdom 1930 establishments in the United Kingdom Organisations based in the City of Westminster Organizations established in 1930