Art Fund awards £1m to local authority museums

The Art Fund has announced £1m in funding for local museums and art galleries to develop partnerships and projects, including supporting isolated rural communities, developing a schools’ loan programme and increasing opportunities for disabled visitors.

Twenty museums and galleries will receive a share of £800,000 through Art Fund’s Reimagine grants programme, with an additional £200,000 distributed through Museum Development UK to support museums and projects.

The grants aim to support organisations to build resilience for the future by working in partnership with bodies outside the cultural sector such as education providers, mental health support services and community organisations.

The successful recipients of the Reimagine funding are:

• Turner Contemporary in Margate: £50,000 for Turner Contemporary Young Environmental Leaders programme.
• The Bowes Museum in County Durham: £49,989 for re-imagining the Bowes Museum’s story with local communities.
• Birmingham Museums Trust: £49,728 for Collections in the Community, aimed at opening up access to the city’s national collections. The funding will help to create new partnerships, including the establishment of a Community Partner Panel.
• Gallery Oldham in Manchester: £46,000 for Our Beautiful Oldham.
• Derby Museums: £45,000 for a “wool takeover” at the Museum of Making and a workshop programme engaging young people, families and wider audiences in creative solutions to the climate emergency and inspiring careers in textiles and making.
• Your Trust Rochdale: £45,000 for the Side-by-Side project.
• De La Warr Pavillion in Bexhill-on-Sea: £45,000 for Transforming Heritage: Community, Creativity and Skills.
• Ikon Gallery in Birmingham: £44,000 for Ikon Creative Health.
• Bristol Museums: £40,000 for Towards New Ecologies.
• Rhondda Cynon Taf Heritage Service: £40,000 for partnership working in Rhondda Cynon Taf: Developing a Sustainable Heritage Forum.
• Museums Northumberland (Hexham Old Gaol): £40,000 for Reimagining England’s first purpose-built Gaol in partnership with Hexham’s communities and illustrator Jonny Hannah.
• Manchester Art Gallery: £45,000 to develop the Rutherston Loan Scheme for the 21st Century, in collaboration with primary, secondary and further education providers, to remove barriers to accessing art and promote visual literacy for children and young people in Manchester’s most deprived areas.
• Fermanagh County Museum in Enniskillen: £42,000 for Art In Our Hands, a participatory programme of creative activities to enhance wellbeing for rurally isolated groups and people with health conditions or those who have experienced trauma.
• Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums: £41,550 for a community forum.
• MK Gallery in Milton Keynes: £40,000 for Sensory Exhibition Engagement, which will increase opportunities for disabled and neurodivergent adults, children and young people to access and engage with exhibitions.
• Museum of Wigan Life: £39,886 for New Perspectives – reframing Wigan collections in the digital sphere.
• CofGâr (Dylan Thomas Boathouse) in Carmarthenshire: £39,643 for Dylan Thomas Boathouse Creative Hub, in partnership with CofGâr (Carmarthenshire County Council’s Museums & Arts Service), Kids in Museums and Carmarthenshire’s Education Service.
• Tees Valley Museums: £30,450 for collections inspired playscapes.
• Hartlepool Art Gallery: £17,445 for Beneath The Surface, a mental health initiative uniting council teams with mental health practitioners to address the low engagement of men with mental health support services.
• The People’s Palace in Glasgow: £10,000 for Reimagining the People’s Palace, which will fund an assistant visitor studies curator to work with communities during the palace’s closure.

“We’re extremely pleased to offer £1m in support to local authority-reliant museums and galleries across the UK – from Carmarthenshire to County Fermanagh – through this latest round of Reimagine grants,” said the Art Fund’s director, Jenny Waldman.

“The projects showcase the incredible value local museums have for communities and demonstrate their remarkable ambition, resilience and entrepreneurial spirit in the face of growing challenges.  

“While we’re pleased to see that the government has committed to increase core local authority spending power by around 3.2% in the Autumn Budget, and promised some much-needed support for national museums and galleries through increased grant-in-aid funding, and capital investment, the Budget falls short of addressing the urgent and long-term challenges facing the sector, particularly for civic museums.

“Three quarters of UK adults say having a local museum adds value to their area. Museums play a central role in rebuilding communities, bringing people together and inspiring audiences through their collections. We will continue to make the case for long-term investment in all UK museums to safeguard these vital spaces of inspiration for communities both now and in the future.”

The Art Fund is supporting the English Civic Museums Network, which has called for the government to make £20m in emergency funding available to save the most at-risk civic museums from closure. Art Fund has also called for an enquiry into regional museum funding, and local authority settlements that enable sustained support for these vital institutions.

The investment has been made possible with the backing of Art Fund’s members and supporters, including the Headley Trust and over 850 donors through the charity’s recent fundraising campaign, Making Connections.