Rural Media Charity, working in partnership with The Little Princess Trust and Herefordshire Museum Service, has recently received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant of £60,400 for an exciting heritage project, Big Wig, launched last month in Hereford.

The project focuses on the history of wig making in the UK and its connection to our increasingly gender-fluid world.

Inspired by the great work of The Little Princess Trust, who provide real-hair wigs to children and young adults facing hair-loss due to cancer treatment or other illnesses, the project aims to connect our present to a past where wigs were sported as status

symbols, demonstrate the use of wigs as similar statements of identity today (by public figures such as Lady Gaga and many on-screen heroes), whilst simultaneously addressing gender stereotypes.

This project is a great chance to connect young people to an often forgotten part of our national heritage, highlight the contemporary use of wigs as identity symbols in celebrity culture and debunk gender stereotypes that could prevent young boys suffering hair loss from accepting help from The Little Princess Trust.

The Big Wig team will be working alongside Aylestone High School and The Bishop of Hereford’s Blue Coat School Year 8 pupils to deliver the project and build skills, experience and knowledge through life-changing access to filmmaking, production and

website development experience. The pupils will get the chance to engage with the wigmaking history in the UK during their visits to The National Theatre at the end of November, Hereford Museum and Art Gallery's Resource and Learning Centre and a wig making workshop with Helen Casey from the National Theatre. Last week, students met Professor Emma Tarlo, an expert in historical wig-making and head of Anthropology at Goldsmiths University of London and will visit Dr Emma Markiewicz, Head of Collections and Engagement, National Archives, Kew next month.

The project will culminate in an exhibition and film at The Courtyard in February next year.

Anne Jenkins, from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said the Big Wig project is a fantastic initiative which will connect young people in Hereford with an “unusual aspect of their heritage that they may know little about”.

“It also shines a light on the admirable work undertaken by The Little Princess Trust,” she added.

Grant Black, the Creative Director of Rural Media and Big Wig Executive Producer, is one of those who cannot wait to see what the future brings for all those involved: “The fantastic work done by The Little Princess Trust has really opened our eyes to the potential for connecting young people to our national heritage, whilst affording the opportunity to break down stigma and boost confidence.

Meanwhile, Wendy Tarplee-Morris, co-founder of The Little Princess Trust, said she hoped the Big Wig project would provide a greater understanding and awareness locally of the work that the charity does. We are so thrilled to be collaborating with Rural Media on the Big Wig project. It is a very exciting time for us at the charity as we are expanding our service provision into Europe and funding more life-saving cancer research projects."