The Anthony Gell School has obtained a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £19,300 to support an exciting new project. Our Place in Time will be a photographic heritage study of Wirksworth and the surrounding area, lead by young people from the school's camera club.

The project team intends to use local sources showing life and landscape changing over time to work as heritage detectives and trace the footprints of events, memories and stories by collecting pictures from the past. New photos of the same locations will be taken and the changes analysed, investigated, documented and shared with the wider community in a book, website and a touring exhibition in autumn 2010.

The young people will have access to collections of images and documents held by the Heritage Centre, Civic Society and local libraries as well as archives held by individual local historians and photographers, but they are looking for old photos of the area from the general public.

Phil Richards, who runs the Camera Club, explained: "We are delighted to get this grant which will help us to produce a quality project. Anyone who has photos that we might use can contact me at school or email philwirks@gmail.com."