Funding news | Our round-up of the latest grant streams and awards

Reimagine grants for local authority-reliant museums

The arts charity Art Fund has launched the latest round of funding from its Reimagine programme, which is designed to inspire creativity and increase stability and resilience in the sector. The fund supports organisations with grants of up to £50,000 to develop or refresh their work in response to their current situation.

This year’s fund will only accept applications from museums and galleries that are reliant on local authority funding. The key aim of the 2024 programme is to fund projects that will help organisations “reimagine their approach to partnerships”.

A webinar for prospective applicants will take place at 1400-1500 on 26 June. The fund closes on 17 July.

Paul Mellon Centre changes Publication Grant

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has made several changes to its Publication Grant in order to streamline the application process.

The Publication Grant supports support a range of publications, from monographs to exhibition catalogues, covering a diverse range of British art and architecture topics.

This year, instead of a single Publication Grant for which authors and publishers can apply separately or together, there will be three distinct categories:

• Author Grants (Large) – awards of up to £6,000, which can be applied for only by authors, editors or individuals working on a long-form piece of written work;
• Author Grants (Small) – awards of up to £1,000, which can be applied for only by individuals working on a short-form piece of written work;
• Exhibition Publication Grants – awards of up to £6,000, which can be applied for only by organisations, institutions or publishers working on a publication associated with an exhibition on British art or architectural history.

Applications will open on 5 August and close on 30 September.

A new Digitisation Grant is due to be introduced in autumn 2024 to support the digitisation of publications. 

GEM Cymru to launch Learning Support Fund

The Group for Education in Museums (GEM) Cymru has received support from the Welsh Government, Culture Division to fund a Learning Support Fund for Accredited museums in Wales in the form of small grants. The objective of the grants is to encourage innovative thinking, original practice and evaluation of new resources and Curriculum for Wales-specific activities for museums to deliver to schools.

The GEM Cymru Learning Support Fund aims to:

• facilitate new ways of working with schools
• develop best practice partnership working
• support the creation, development, or adaptation of innovative working practices
• develop, expand or enhance new school visit resources related to the new Curriculum for Wales.

Accredited museums in Wales can apply for grants of up to £1,500 for activity that takes place between September and December 2024.

The closing date for applications is 1700 on 19 July 2024. Successful applicants will be notified in August 2024.

Small museums awarded science grants

The Royal Society has revealed the 36 small museums that will receive grants of up to £3,500 from this year’s Places of Science fund. Now in its fifth round, the scheme supports museums to engage local communities with science through their heritage and collections.

Successful recipients include Beaminster Museum, which has been awarded funding for a 3D scanning project and the Herschel Museum of Astronomy, which has received support to improve its Planetarium activity programme.

Carlos Frenk, cosmologist and chair of the Royal Society’s public engagement committee, said: “The Royal Society Places of Science scheme is now in its fifth round, and once again, the sheer diversity of projects and the creativity of this year’s awardees is astounding.

“Science plays a daily part in all our lives, and I’m delighted to think that new audiences from across the UK will be able to learn about the fascinating ways in which science has shaped their local communities throughout history and the vital role that it continues to play today.”