The National Football Museum has been awarded with a Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, finally enabling the museum to exhibit the world’s biggest collection of women’s football memorabilia.
The grant of £102,156 means that the museum will be able to continue to piece together the largely lost history of women’s football, utilising the funds to permanently exhibit the world’s largest collection of women’s memorabilia in the Manchester museum.
Announced by Matt Hancock, Minister of State for Digital and Culture, the funding is part of a £4 million grant for English museums, and is jointly funded through a partnership between the DCMS, and the Wolfson foundation.
Consisting of thousands of items from the 1890s to present day, the Chris Unger History of Women’s Football Collection will now be carefully curated and placed on public display later in 2017. The eclectic collection was acquired by the museum last year, with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
From medals to fan collectables, the physical timeline of women’s football is the lifetime collection of US football coach Chris Unger who sadly passed away in 2015.
The museum will now be able to unearth the wider collection to the public, joining highlights that are already on display, notably World Cup shirts worn by world superstars Marta of Brazil and the USA’s Mia Hamm.
The exhibition will form part of a wider initiative by the museum to continue to uncover the history of one of the nation’s most loved participation sports.
The funding will also allow the museum to expand it’s display of football toys and games, joining over 300 objects, ranging from 1880s board games to modern motion capture suits used in the creation of the FIFA 16 video games.