MSDS Marine are pleased to be able to offer two annual grant awards for maritime archaeology in the UK.
Maritime archaeology in England and Wales is underpinned by Licensees and their teams volunteering their time and enthusiasm to help ensure the wreck sites are enjoyed, researched and protected. Licensees and their teams have played a huge role in the careers of all MSDS Marine staff. They have inspired us, taught us and helped us develop our skills and to recognise this we would like to give something back. To recognise this 2018 saw the first of the MSDS Marine awards to help support Licensees and their teams. This is now an annual grant scheme.
The second award MSDS Marine award, also initiated in 2018, is to help support maritime archaeology students in the UK. The growing MSDS Marine team includes a number of early years’ professionals who have all recently completed university courses. Their recent experience highlights the significant costs faced by students to complete their education. We strongly believe fieldwork and other training experiences help create professionals with a more rounded skill set and are keen to help allow students to maximise the experiences that they get. To this end we offer many volunteer opportunities for students but we are now also keen to help support them financially to gain experiences which might otherwise be unaffordable.
In 2024 we are pausing the MSDS Marine grant but hope will be bringing it back, perhaps in a better form, in 2025 so watch this space! In recent years applications to the grant scheme have fallen considerably and we want to ensure that our grant scheme investment is useful for those that it is intended to help. We have a few ideas about how we can help teams working on protected wreck sites and people coming into the sector but they won’t be in place for 2024. If you have suggestions though we would love to hear from you!