Conor McGinn has welcomed a grant of almost хЃ500,000 to Heart of Glass that will help St Helens women learn about their past.
The award from Arts Council England is part of a national scheme to stimulate ambition and excellence in the arts.
Heart of Glass will use the хЃ487,500 grant for a major two-year project starting next year.
It will work with ANU productions and a contemporary art organisation, idle women, to use genealogy and other historical research to explore the everyday histories of the women of St Helens.
The project will form the basis for a new set of productions in 2018 to coincide with the borough’s 150^th anniversary.
Conor said: “It never fails to impress me just how engaged and invested residents can become in collaborative public art projects and culture – something that we’ve all seen before with previous Heart of Glassprojects like ‘Your Name Here’.
“It’s fantastic to hear that local women have the chance to learn and develop new skills and to delve into the everyday histories of their ancestry.”
Heart of Glass hopes the groundbreaking project will help make St Helens a centre of excellence for collaborative art schemes and help develop new digital ways of involving local people in the scheme.