Grants to Promote Innovation in the Heritage Sector

Funding is now available for organisations with creative ideas to shape the future of working in heritage.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund has announced its latest UK-wide programme, the Heritage Innovation Fund.

The Fund is intended to involve three phases:

  • Phase 1: Explore – for organisations at the early ideas stage, focusing on defining a clear problem and developing potential solutions.
  • Phase 2: Test – will offer support to put promising prototypes and ideas into practice to gather evidence of what works.
  • Phase 3: Grow – will offer support to implement findings more widely and share good practice the sector.

Applications are currently being accepted for the Explore phase, which offers grants of up to £25,000 for six months of delivery.

Funding should allow organisations to explore, test and grow new ways of working needed to support the future of heritage.

Heritage organisations of any size or type may apply. This could include non-profits, local authorities and private owners of heritage (with a workforce).

Challenges which may be addressed include:

  • Ways of working.
  • Who is part of the heritage workforce.
  • What skills are needed.

There will be a series of workshops throughout August and September 2022 for applicants.

The deadline to apply is 27 September 2022.

(This report was the subject of a GRANTfinder Newsflash.)