History of Huron County's Heritage Fund

by Bob Montgomery

Huron County's Director of Cultural Services brought county councillors up to day on the history of the County's Heritage Fund this week.

Beth Rumble says the Heritage Fund was started in 2007 when a neighbouring municipality requested funding for their Heritage project. That prompted Huron County to start a Heritage Fund of its own. Rumble says initially the county allocated twenty-thousand dollars to the Heritage Fund and in 2012 the funding was bumped up to twenty-five thousand dollars to keep up with the demand on the funding.

Rumble says initially the fund was for Heritage Restoration projects but then that was expanded to include Heritage publications and recently that's been expanded to include things like video series, podcasts and theatre projects so there is now a wide range of interesting Heritage projects. Rumble says the first intake for funding applications is in May of every year and if all of the twenty-five thousand dollars is allocated in that first intake, applications would have to wait until the following May. If there is funding left over after the May intake, there will be a second intake in November for whatever money is left over from the original twenty-five thousand dollars. Rumble says in the last three years the demand has been such that there hasn't been a second intake. The current trend suggests that there are more projects than there are funds available.