Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what programmes or events her Department funds to celebrate, protect and promote the culture and heritage of former mining communities.

Government recognises the enormous contribution that mining communities have given and continue to give to this country and funds several cultural projects in mining areas through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic England.

One project, a £270,000 grant for the North East England Mining Archive and Research Centre at Sunderland University, will preserve, catalogue and provide access to the archives of the regional coal industry. Heritage Lottery Fund’s Your Heritage scheme also provided funding to the Beamish Museum in County Durham for their Mining Memories project which worked with 40 schools in specific former coalfield communities.