The National Lottery Heritage Fund Grant Awarded

To increase the resilience and sustainability of its operations for people and nature

Marine conservation and education charity, the Scottish Seabird Centre, based in East Lothian, was thrilled to receive a grant of £249,685 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund earlier this year. The funding has been awarded to improve the overall sustainability of the Charity’s operations, develop partnerships with business and to better steward and grow its membership base. Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, the project is designed to help the Charity build a strong foundation for the future.

The grant supports the appointment of three new members to the Charity’s core team - Florence Gygax who joins as the Corporate Partnership Development Manager, Jasper Rea as the Sustainability and Assets Officer and Carrie Bevan who moves into the Membership Development Officer role. All the posts are supported for an 18 month period.

The new project team will work together to:

Increase audience diversity and promote greater inclusion through the Charity’s award winning visitor attraction and programme of events and activities.
Create additional capacity to engage more effectively in partnership development projects to improve nature and the connections people have with nature; especially with businesses and communities.
Improve the overall sustainability of the Charity’s operations, including new renewable energy installations.

The Scottish Seabird Centre is supported by an award winning visitor attraction which is designed to help people learn more about Scotland’s exceptional marine wildlife and habitats. All their activities aim to inspire people to take action for nature and help protect and restore it for generations to come. The Charity was established with support from the Millennium Commission and will celebrate it’s 25th birthday in 2025. They are now looking to the future, building on the legacy of their first 25 years, to allow them to continue to inspire and educate people about the Scotland’s internationally important seabirds, marine life and habitats.

Caroline Clark, The National Lottery Heritage Fund Director for Scotland, said; “We would like to extend a warm welcome to Florence, Carrie and Jasper as they join, and strengthen, the team at the Scottish Seabird Centre.

“Last year we launched our new 10-year strategy - Heritage 2033. Included in the key priorities of Heritage 2033 are protecting the environment; inclusion, access and participation; and organisational sustainability. Those are all goals shared by the Scottish Seabird Centre with this project.”

Susan Davies, CEO of the Scottish Seabird Centre, says “We are delighted to have received this signficant support thanks to National Lottery players. The project will help our Charity to continue to support the restoration of nature and to offer more people opportunities to learn about and take action for nature. It also enables us to take further steps to invest in and improve the overall sustainability of our visitor attraction”.

Florence Gygax, Carrie Bevan and Jasper Rea join the Scottish Seabird Centre team thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. The funding will help the marine conservation and education Charity increase the resilience and sustainability of its operations for people and nature.

Further information

For further information, images or interviews please contact Jess Thompson, Marketing Manager, Scottish Seabird Centre on marketing@seabird.org / 01620 890202.

All images credit: © Jamie McDermaid, Scottish Seabird Centre

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About the Scottish Seabird Centre

The Scottish Seabird Centre is an award-winning marine conservation and education charity. Our purpose is to inspire and educate people about the Scottish marine environment and motivate people to care for it by supporting conservation projects.

For 25 years the Charity’s work has been supported by its visitor attraction, based in North Berwick, East Lothian. The attraction contains a wide variety of story boards, digital interactives, virtual reality and remotely operated cameras that enable people to experience and learn about the spectacular wildlife of Scotland’s marine environment.

The charity leads or contributes to a range of high-profile conservation and community action projects including the SOS Puffin initiative in the Firth of Forth and the WWF-UK led Restoration Forth which is piloting the restoration of seagrass meadows and European flat oysters in the Firth of Forth. The Charity also supports a range of seabird and marine learning and outreach activities for schools, festivals and community groups.

For more information on the Scottish Seabird Centre visit https://www.seabird.org or follow via Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram and Linked In.

About The National Lottery Heritage Fund

As the largest dedicated funder of the UK’s heritage, The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. 

Over the next ten years, the Heritage Fund aims to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to bring about benefits for people, places and the natural environment.  

The Heritage Fund helps protect, transform and share the things from the past that people care about, from popular museums and historic places, our natural environment and fragile species, to the languages and cultural traditions that celebrate who we are. 

The Heritage Fund is passionate about heritage and committed to driving innovation and collaboration to make a positive difference to people’s lives today, while leaving a lasting legacy for future generations to enjoy.  

Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLotteryHeritageFund  www.heritagefund.org.uk.