The National Lottery Heritage Fund has announced that applications have reopened for project grants from £3,000 to £5million.
This welcome news follows almost a year of providing emergency support for heritage in response to the COVID-19 crisis. National Lottery Grants for Heritage is the UK’s largest funding stream for heritage projects, with £200m to £300m usually distributed each year.
In March 2020, The National Lottery Heritage Fund halted new project funding, with all efforts focussed on supporting heritage across the UK to survive and recover from the impact of COVID-19. Thanks to the £50 million Heritage Emergency Fund, more than 950 organisations across the UK were able to cope with the challenges they faced when they needed it most. In November 2020 applications for projects between £3,000 to £100,000 reopened and from today, applications are once again open for funding awards from £3,000 up to £5million.
Ros Kerslake, CEO of The National Lottery Heritage Fund said: “Heritage has an essential role to play in making communities better places to live, creating economic prosperity and supporting personal wellbeing. All of these are going to be vitally important as we build back from the current pandemic.
“During 2020 we focused on supporting heritage across the UK to adapt and respond to the immediate impact of the COVID-19 crisis. By the end of this financial year we will have supported more than 1,500 organisations across the heritage sector with over £500million of National Lottery and Government funding.
“Our focus now is to support the heritage sector to strengthen its recovery and to build back for positive change – reopening applications for heritage projects is key to the success of this.”
National Lottery Grants for Heritage are once again available for the same, broad range of heritage projects and activities that have always been supported, from industrial heritage and sites, castles and historic places of worship, to the stories and memories of our communities, through to public parks, natural landscapes and native wildlife.
The critical change is that – between April 2021 and March 2022 – when making funding decisions, priority will be given to heritage projects that deliver at least one of the following outcomes:
- boosting local economies, including job creation
- improving people’s wellbeing
- making local areas better place to live, work and visit
- developing skills, including creating training opportunities
- improving the resilience of organisations we fund
These priority outcomes will ensure that the funding provided by National Lottery players will support the wider UK economic and social recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is a requirement for every project to achieve an inclusion outcome: ‘a wider range of people will be involved in heritage’. In addition, all projects will have to demonstrate they are environmentally responsible and are integrating environmental measures, reflecting The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s commitment to environmental sustainability and a ‘green’ recovery from the pandemic.
National Lottery Grants for Heritage were introduced in February 2019 as part of a new, simplified funding model. Since then, more than 1,000 projects have been funded including:
For example, in the north-east of Scotland, National Lottery funding has been awarded to a pioneering project which uses nature to tackle isolation and loneliness among care home residents. Silver Saplings, run by environmental charity Wild Things, uses nature activities to improve mental and physical health while also caring for some of Scotland's most fragile natural heritage.
With a £475,700 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund it is expected to help over 3,000 vulnerable people.
As well as opening up 4.5 miles of canal and preserving the canal archives from the 1730s, Cotswold Canals Connected will bring huge benefits in terms of the economy, leisure, health, heritage and the environment.
An £8.9m grant is funding the creation of 21 hectares of biodiversity land and 30,000 new trees and shrubs. This will generate additional spending of £5.5 million a year in the local economy, bringing health benefits estimated at £8 million a year, and involve up to 500 extra volunteers.
Further information, including guidance on how to apply for grants, can be found here.
