Awards and Bursaries

Bill Pettit Memorial Award 2021

NatSCA is pleased to invite applications to this year’s Bill Pettit Memorial Award. Up to £3,000 of grant money, is available to NatSCA members this year to support projects including the conservation, access and use of natural science collections.

Charles Arthur William ‘Bill’ Pettit (1937-2009) started his career with the National Institute of Oceanography but moved to the Manchester Museum in 1975 to become Assistant Keeper of Zoology. In his time at Manchester, Bill worked tirelessly for the collections and was instrumental in projects such as FENSCORE as well as numerous publications. It is in recognition of his commitment to natural science collections that we would like to offer this award.

Projects will be assessed against NatSCA’s mission and are sored against: conservation of collections, collections access, collections use and timescales and costs. We are looking for innovative projects that can be delivered on time and budget, leaving a tangible legacy. Each project will be considered on its own merits by the NatSCA committee.

To apply please fill out the application form.

Projects previously supported:
2020/2021:
The Last Passenger: Conservation of the SS Great Britain Cormorant Skeleton (Awarded £1424)
Curating, Digitising and Displaying a Unique Historic Odontological Collection (Awarded £2100)
2019/2020:
University of Liverpool Zoology Redisplay Project (Awarded £1840)
Leo Conservation Project (Awarded £1105)
2017/2018:
A Virtual Flora of Tullie: “Sowing the Seeds” to Digitise a Nationally Significant Herbarium (Awarded £1200)
Taking wing: Curation of a Venezuelan Hawkmoth collection (Awarded £805)
2016/2017
Uniting and rationalising catalogues of different collections in a Life Sciences (Awarded £750)
Nature Notes – increasing access to local wildlife (Awarded £750)
2013/2014
Saving the World’s Rarest Skeleton (Awarded £750)
Cataloguing of three large collections of deep-sea samples held in the Discovery Collections (Awarded £750)
2011/2012
The Margaret Gatty algal herbarium in the St Andrews Herbarium (Awarded £1848)
Victorian Taxidermy conservation project, Ipswich Museums (Awarded £784)