New opportunities for Museums

In our strategy for 2020-2030, Let’s Create, we say ‘the surest way to fill the future with every variety of flower is to recognise that we can all be gardeners.’ As a keen gardener myself, this reference resonated with me and my role at the Arts Council, which is to help more museums access our funding.

Museums are at the heart of our communities and so I see our new strategy as an opportunity for them to help us deliver the ‘Cultural Communities’ that we talk about in our three Outcomes. 

Over the years, I’ve seen the tremendous impact project funding can have for museums and how they have the potential to become great examples of how we’re investing in places and supporting our Delivery Plan theme of ‘Strengthening our place-based approach’.

Examples like Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, who used their Project Grants funding to set up #HastingsDigitalMuseum. The project worked with creative freelancers to produce digital activities inspired by their collection to help reduce social isolation and loneliness during lockdown. 

Meanwhile, the Power of Stories exhibition, co-curated by Colchester and Ipswich Museum and diverse communities, drew on their world culture collections to ask how the stories we know shape the way we see the world. It worked to bring a more diverse audience to the museum and included the display of iconic costumes from Marvel Studios’ Black Panther.

Supporting museums like these to deliver great projects is what really excites me. So it’s inspiring to see that the refreshed approach to National Lottery Project Grants is set up to help museums deliver our strategy.

The surest way to fill the future with every variety of flower is to recognise that we can all be gardeners.

What’s changed for museums?

National Lottery Project Grants has changed for everyone and museums will benefit from these changes too. 

The lighter touch application process has been expanded to grant applications under £30,000 (rather than under £15,000 like before we refreshed the programme). That means your museum can now apply for up to £30,000 and get a decision within 8 weeks. This helps us to support more ambitious activity, more quickly and be more agile for projects that need to start quickly in response to community issues or events. 

We can invest in all aspects of museums work now. From longer term projects lasting up to three years, to capital projects which help museums develop their buildings, collections and their work with communities.

We’re also opening Project Grants up to more museums - you no longer need to be Accredited or Working Towards Accreditation to apply. 

We know there are a lot of community-based museums interested in developing their practice, so we’re opening up the funding to those organisations to see what they apply for. It’s an experiment, and we’ll be monitoring the response to see what impact this has on these museums and practice in the sector.  

Collections

If your organisation holds a Designated collection, you can apply to Project Grants for funding to support the development of projects related to this collection. 

The significance and diversity of Designated collections means they are well suited to this programme, particularly in relation to our Ambition & Quality Investment Principle. We’re keen to see applications from them showing how they align their projects with our Inclusivity & Relevance objectives too.

We’re also opening a new time-limited priority called ‘Unlocking collections’ to encourage museums to apply to make their collections more accessible. You can find out more about this in our information sheet.

I’m excited to see what projects we’ll be able to fund within these new guidelines and I’d like to see more museums to applying, so that we can see some brilliant work with collections and communities.  

If you have an idea that you think would work, please get in touch. Our customer services team are excellent and can help you decide if this programme is right for you.

We want to keep supporting this type of great work in our role as the national development agency for creativity and culture, so we can continue to see our museums blossom.