Supporter case study: Headley Trust
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The Headley Trust has provided invaluable support to the British Museum through a longstanding partnership.
The Headley Trust was established in 1973 by Sir Timothy Sainsbury who chaired the Trust until 2022 and remains actively involved. The Trust has been supporting a wide variety of the British Museum's programmes since 1998, with particular emphasis on the following projects.
Documentation and digitisation
In 2024, the Headley Trust provided a historic gift of £5 million to the British Museum for the Documentation and Digitisation Project, which will ensure every object has an accompanying online record accessible to global audiences on the Collection online database.
The Trust's monumental support underpins the recruitment of essential staff to enable this ambition, including collections managers, documentation assistants, image assistants and digital experts. Without this backing it would take the Museum approximately 20 years to achieve this documentation and digitisation milestone.
British Museum Archaeological Research Collection
The British Museum Archaeological Research Collection (BM_ARC) is a state-of-the-art research and collection storage facility, designed to house around 1.3 million objects and make them accessible to both scholars and the general public.
A gift from the Headley Trust supported the development of the Headley Trust Study Space, which sits at the heart of BM_ARC. This space supports the examination and study of the collections by staff, students, research partners and visiting members of the public. It's designed with flexibility in mind and can be reconfigured to accommodate a range of research, teaching and study activities. The space is central to increasing the British Museum's research capacity and helps to deepen knowledge of human cultural achievement.
The Headley Trust Portable Antiquities Scheme Internships
The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is a voluntary scheme to record archaeological objects found by the public in England and Wales.
Since 2009, the Headley Trust has enabled an internship programme aimed at providing comprehensive training for people who would like to enter a career in archaeology or the museum and heritage sector. Interns receive training in archaeological small finds work and undertake a professional project based on their interests and career goals, while also supporting the work of the PAS's Finds Liaison Officers. Each internship makes a direct positive contribution to the collective knowledge of the archaeology and history of England and Wales, with interns recording finds on the PAS database and enhancing records by adding context and images. Funding from the Headley Trust has enabled over 70 individuals to complete internships across all the PAS regions with the great majority continuing with careers in archaeology.
