Lottery funding

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) is the largest dedicated funder of the UK's heritage. It invests around £375 million a year in new projects. Between April 1994 and March 2011, HLF awarded over £281 million to over 1,050 archive and library projects.  The Heritage Lottery Fund have recently published their Strategic Framework for 2013-18.

The HLF provides a unique opportunity for the archival community to seek substantial funding to maintain and develop our archival infrastructure and heritage.

The National Archives is able to support any organisation in the UK that is planning projects involving archives, and seeking to bid for lottery funding. Support includes information on current programmes and eligibility criteria, advice on fundraising strategies and partnership funding, assistance with project planning and the application process and training events. More information about the service is available by contacting Archives Sector Development.

Some recent grants for archive projects from the Heritage Lottery Fund include:

Heritage Grants (over £100,000)

• National Jazz Archive
• UK Centre for Carnival Arts
• Britten-Pears Foundation
• Exeter Cathedral
• Rambert Dance Company
• Cumbria Archive Service - Alfred Wainwright Archive
• Manchester Archives+ Project
• Wiltshire and Swindon Archives - Lacock Unlocked
• Regent's Park College, Oxford - Baptist History

Your Heritage Grants (£3,000 to £100,000)

• Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society 'Old Flames and Feathers'
• North Yorkshire County Record Office 'Trawling through Time'
• North Lanarkshire Archives and Record Centre
• Gloucestershire Archives and Gloucester City Centre Community Partnership: Fielding and Platt Community Archive Project
• West Lothian Archive Service: 'Life is for Livingston'
• Working Class Movement Library: Invisible Histories-Salford's Working Lives
• Art of Regeneration - Every Picture Tells a Story
• Strike a Light - Ale and Hearty

Other useful sources of information include:

• Arts Council England: gives details on how lottery money funds arts grants
• BIG Lottery Fund: provides funding from The National Lottery to community groups and to projects that improve health, education and the environment
• National Heritage Memorial Fund: distributes the heritage share of lottery money for good causes, through the HLF

Digital only projects

The Heritage Lottery Fund have just published guidance to explain their recent policy change, allowing creation of and public engagement with digital materials to be the main focus of a funded project. You can read our The National Archives' blog for more information.

Collections Link has also developed a new section of resources relevant to this policy change.