January 2003 saw the launch by the European Commission of the European Year of Disabled People and a booklet has just been produced to celebrate some of the ways lottery funding for the arts, heritage, sports and community has helped to benefit disabled people.

Amongst those projects mentioned is the Henshaws Arts and Crafts Centre at Knaresborough in Yorkshire, which received a £1.9m grant from Arts Council England to establish a high quality arts and crafts centre, with a sensory garden. The site includes workshops for arts and crafts and artists in residence and an amphitheatre for drama and music.

The Heritage Lottery Fund provided a grant of £290,000 to RNIB Talking Books to help the organisation restore and transfer its archive of old master recordings to Talking Books from the mid-1930’s to the 1970’s onto CD-ROM.

The English Federation of Disability Sport received £1m from Sport England towards the cost of its Inclusive Fitness Initiative. This is designed to increase opportunities for disabled people to exercise alongside the non-disabled in fitness centres and has been successfully developed across 30 English local authorities.

Elsewhere, sportscotland provided £70,000 for the Uphill Ski Club of Great Britain’s Cairngorm Project – which is committed to the long-term provision and integration of winter sports facilities for disabled people – and the Sports Council for Northern Ireland gave £15,300 to the Knights Junior Basketball Club in Antrim towards the cost of 20 basketball-specific wheelchairs.

Also in Scotland, the Scottish Arts Council awarded £178,000 to Sense Scotland for an inclusive three-year project called Sensing Art and Music. Visual arts and music workshops, exhibitions and performances are being held in Glasgow, Fife, Perth and Dundee.

The various funding distributors work closely with The Disability Rights Commission to achieve the commission’s aim of creating a society where disabled people can participate as equal citizens. Details: www.dcms.gov.uk