Porthleven Museum has received lottery funding which will be used to create a documentary chronicling the history of the port.

Founder Mike Carter says that he hopes to use some of the money to improve the digital museum.

Production company Artefact It, which specialises in creating historical documentaries, will be working on the project.

The DVD entitled Talk of the Town will consist of interviews with older Porthleveners "whose stories are being lost".

It will explore the history of the harbour, boat building, wrecks and rescue services.

Mike has thousands of historic photographs of Porthleven in his archive, many of which are available to view on porthlevenmuseum.org.uk.

The grant from The Heritage Lottery will allow him to create an interactive website to improve the visitor experience.

Some of the money will go towards running workshops.

One of these will involve a professional photographer teaching young people how to take better pictures with their mobile phones.

Mike hopes to encourage youngsters to replicate historic photographs with their phones to create a before and after exhibition.

The museum was founded when Mike was asked to document the harbour for a council meeting.

In doing so, he spoke with Alan Ziemann and the pair decided to create a digital museum as a non-profit community resource.

Residents pulled together and donated a wealth of images.

Mike said: "What followed went beyond all expectation. With so many contributing such a diversity of information portraying our heritage we had to take the project further."

Things "snowballed" from there, said Mike, eventually leading to an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth.

Although there have been various exhibitions and an online gallery since 2011, "Porthleven Museum has never been formally launched," said Mike.

"Our aim was to have everything in place before doing so, this has taken longer than expected."

But now with the lottery funding and the new documentary, the museum is ready for its official launch.

Mike said that a permanent physical home for the exhibits may be found in the future to allow people with no computer access to enjoy the offerings.