How to Apply - Portals

Timetable

Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants will open for applications twice a year, usually in the autumn and spring. Future rounds of funding are scheduled to take place on the following timetable:

Round	Opens	Closes	Panel Meeting
2		4th April 2025	June 2025
3	1st September 2025	9th October 2025	January 2026
4	16th March 2026	30th April 2026	July 2026
5	31st August 2026	1st October 2026	December 2026

Eligibility

This programme can fund most organisations with an archival collection including deposited collections, which are able to provide access to the collection for the public in the UK for at least ten years following the grant’s completion.

We recommend that organisations consult with qualified archivists when preparing their application, so that they are informed about the project and can provide informed answers to the questions. If awarded funding, grantees must have access to professional archival expertise from a qualified archivist or heritage professional with equivalent experience, to ensure adherence to archive professional standards and support recruited staff, including newly-recruited archivists, in the delivery and management of the project. Applications that are not able to clearly show the involvement of archive / heritage professionals are highly unlikely to receive funding and may be deemed ineligible.

Archives Revealed can fund any eligible organisations in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The funded collection must also be held in these countries. We cannot fund organisations based in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, or organisations whose collections are held outside of the UK.

If your project will take place in Wales, you must include the Welsh language in all aspects of your work. You must tell us in your application how you will promote and support the Welsh language and reflect the bilingual nature of Wales.

Archives are rich sources of information and Archives Revealed does not make a distinction between physical or digital (or mixed) collections. An archive collection is one that holds unique records, which can be of local, national and international importance and are often themed by place or thematic area of interest. To find out more about what an archive collection is, please visit: What are archives? – The National Archives.

For the purposes of Archives Revealed, we use the definition of an archive collection as given within the Archive Service Accreditation Scheme:

“Materials created or received by a person, family or organisation, public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in them or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator, especially those materials maintained using the principles of provenance, original order and collective control; permanent records.”

We would encourage any archive to work towards Archives Service Accreditation, which can be used to demonstrate the strength of an archive service within an application – however it is not mandatory to be an accredited archive to apply to the scheme.

While usually thought of as handwritten or typed documents on paper, archives also commonly include: printed documents, photographs, digital objects (such as e-mail, databases etc), audio/visual material, sketches, drawings, maps and plans. This list is not exhaustive and may include more unusual items, such as the knotted cords used for record keeping by Andean cultures or a variety of types of object.

Funded organisations must make their collections accessible to people outside of their organisation for at least ten years, following the conclusion of the grant-funded project. We can fund organisations with owned or deposited collections, provided that they can provide a commitment from the depositor that the collection will not be withdrawn from public access or sold within ten years of the project end date. We will reclaim funding, where this condition is not met.

There are no restrictions on past applicants applying, however our data shows that reapplications are no more likely to receive funding than first-time applications. There is no restriction on institutions submitting an application for a different collection than that previously assessed.

You do not need to have completed a Scoping Grant, to apply for a Cataloguing Grant.

We welcome partnership and consortium bids, provided that the lead organisation satisfies all of the criteria above. Institutions may submit multiple bids in the same round, particularly where they are part of networks or consortia; however, given the competitiveness of this funding programme, we recommend that applicants focus only on the most significant collections, which are of highest priority for their organisation.

Institutions may apply to Archives Revealed if they already have funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, but should not apply directly to the Heritage Fund and to Archives Revealed with the same project.

Should you have any questions about the eligibility of your collection for an Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grant, please contact the team by email at: archivegrants@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Budgets and Restrictions

Applicants will be asked to submit a full budget for their project. The maximum award of funding for any grant will be £50,000. At least 20% of your grant award must be allocated to engagement activities using the catalogued collection.

Staffing

Archives Revealed will fund the additional staff costs required to deliver your project. This can include employing new project staff, or backfilling existing staff allocated to the project.

The project needs to be managed and substantially carried out by appropriately qualified staff. Volunteers, secondments, apprenticeships, internships and staff exchanges may be eligible to fulfil supporting roles, and we welcome e.g. volunteer- or community-led approaches to cataloguing – but we do not support projects that are managed and led solely by volunteers.

We ask that archives use the most recent Archives and Records Association (ARA) payscales: ARA recommendations on professional salary levels, wherever qualified archivists are employed. If your organisation’s payscales differ from the recommendations provided by ARA please contact the Archives Revealed Team before submitting your application.

Non-staff costs

Complementary materials such as packaging costs, or complementary costs such as travel and subsistence, or materials for public engagement activities, can be included in your budget request.

Match Funding

The programme can supply up to 100% of project costs; however we strongly encourage applicants to contribute from their own resources or other funding sources (e.g. other grant funders). This could be in the form of a cash contribution, confirmed funding from external sources, or an in-kind contribution. Match funding can increase an application’s chances of funding success.

Please note that applicants cannot apply separately to Archives Revealed and directly to The National Lottery Heritage Fund for the same project, or use funding from Archives Revealed to match-fund a National Lottery Heritage Fund application.

Other Costs

Archives Revealed cannot fund:

the conservation of archives
the cataloguing of non-archive collections

We reserve the right to offer conditional or partial funding of a project.

Overheads and Indirect Costs

The programme does not support full economic cost recovery or overheads. It cannot be used to fund costs incurred prior to the grant being awarded and/or for the development of a funding application.

The grant may not be used for the following purposes: payments that support activity intended to influence Parliament, Government or political parties, or attempting to influence the awarding or renewal of contracts and grants, or attempting to influence legislative or regulatory action.

Assessment Process

Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants have a single-stage application process. Your application will be reviewed by the Archives Revealed team and other experts at The National Archives, before being shared with an independent Expert Panel made up of skilled and experienced archive and heritage professionals, which makes the funding decisions.

Applicants are required to submit their applications via the online system above, apart from in extenuating circumstances. Please contact the Archives Revealed team should you wish to submit an application in MS Word, or if you have other accessibility requirements with which we may be able to assist, at least 15 days before the closing of a round of funding. Contact the team at archivegrants@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Application Form

Applications will be assessed against the following five criteria, which are weighted in assessment:

Significance (30% of overall score)
Need and priority for cataloguing (10% of overall score)
Cataloguing approach and improvement to access (10% of overall score)
Audiences, engagement, and impact (30% of overall score)
Feasibility, project management and staffing (20% of overall score)

The application criteria in Archives Revealed are deliberately kept broad to enable archive services to communicate their own key priorities.

Applications are assessed by an Expert Panel of archival and heritage experts, selected to represent a broad range of organisations, backgrounds, subject specialisms and geographic spread. Each application will be scored numerically against the criteria above, according to the following scale, with scores then weighted as detailed above:

Score	Rating
1	Poor
2	Low
3	Good
4	Excellent
5	Outstanding

Assessment Criteria

Further information on each assessment criterion is given below. This information is not intended to be exhaustive: an outstanding answer may not cover all of the points mentioned, and/or may cover other points as appropriate to the applicant and their project. However, the information below should assist applicants in writing successful proposals and will be provided to each panellist to guide their assessment.

Significance

Archives Revealed is committed to supporting the preservation and use of significant archival collections within the United Kingdom. You should aim to outline why your collection is important, unique and of clear value to your audiences, today and in the future.

Significance may be different for different audiences that engage with a collection, and it may be helpful to consider who they are. An academic may have a different goal, when engaging with a collection, than a family historian or community representative.

The prompts below may help you to think about why and how your collection is significant, but you do not need to cover all of them – you should focus your answer on your collection’s areas of strength:

Provenance: who created, collected and has used the collection.
Rarity: whether the collection is unique or unusual, and if it is a particularly fine example of a collection of its type.
Condition and Completeness: whether the collection is intact and in good condition, and if its condition can tell us anything about its history, ownership or use.
Historical, Cultural or Scientific Meaning: how the collection tells the story of particular people, groups, organisations, events, places, beliefs, or practices; whether it has special historic or cultural interest for an audience, region or community; whether and how it could be used for academic research; and whether it enriches or fills in gaps in other collections, at your organisation or elsewhere.
Sensory and Emotional Impact: whether the collection has strong visual/sensory impact, or evokes a strong personal or cultural response; and whether the language, format, technique, design or style reflect outstanding creativity or innovation.
Marketing and Entrepreneurialism: whether the collection could support marketing, income generation or profile-raising for your organisation or community.
Engagement, Access and Inclusion: whether cataloguing the collection would enable the archive service to reach a specific audience group, or to engage with a new or wider audience.

Please ensure that the focus of your response is on the collection that you are intending to work with. The significance of the wider collections in your archive can be important, but your main focus should be on the collection that you are applying for.

If you want to find out more about significance statements, there is detailed guidance in this video: Archives Revealed: How to conduct a significance assessment and write a significance statement – YouTube.

Need and priority for cataloguing

Archives Revealed is a funding programme motivated by an understanding that there is a significant backlog of collections held by archives, heritage institutions and other groups that is inaccessible or under-exploited because it is uncatalogued. The programme cannot address the whole of the backlog and must be selective in making awards to projects deemed the most significant with the potential to engage the interest of the UK public.

Therefore, we would like to understand why you have chosen the particular collection(s) to apply for funding to catalogue, above other collections you may hold. If you are applying to catalogue your entire archive holding, we would still want to understand the process you have followed in selecting it for application.

Your answer should be clear and detailed, evidencing planning and forethought about the selection of your collection.

If your organisation has a collections information policy, or guidance around accessions to your collection this should be for your first point of reference in describing why you have prioritised the chosen collection. Questions you may wish to consider when describing the prioritisation could include:

What is known about the contents of the collection, and how does it relate to other collections you hold and with your own organisation’s priorities now and in the future?
Any previous work to describe the collection, the state of existing description and what this has told you about what is required to create an effective full catalogue.
The existing and anticipated demand by users, this would ideally be complemented with some statistical evidence for example number of enquiries you have received in the past or use of analogous collections. It would also be useful to consider whether the collection could attract new audiences and who you anticipate these could be.
The condition, completeness and complexity of the collection. Archives Revealed’s projects have a fixed maximum budget and duration: proposals for cataloguing should be realistic and you may need to prioritise only a portion of the collection or adopt a particular level of cataloguing should it be very large or complex.

Various methodologies exist for the prioritisation of uncatalogued archive materials. If you have an established prioritisation approach, please explain this. To learn more about one prioritisation methodology, Logjam, please visit: Logjam revisited (youtube.com) (To note the Logjam methodology was created in 2003. The National Archives is currently exploring its continued usability and refinement – applicants’ first port of call should be their own collections management processes, where these are already in place).

Cataloguing approach and improvement to access

To ensure that the grants which we award are delivered with an understanding of technical good practice in the sector, we ask applicants to explain their technical approach to cataloguing, and the standards to be applied throughout the project’s delivery.Our panels are made up of professional experts, however, we expect that you clearly explain your approach and how it will impact the project’s delivery. Please do not use acronyms or abbreviated text.

We have published guidance on technical good practice in our advice webpages: Cataloguing archive collections – Archives sector (nationalarchives.gov.uk).These may be helpful in preparing your response; there are also numerous other resources available online, including the Archives and Records Association’s best practice guidelines and toolkits. You may wish to make reference to further specific standards, if the collection is film/AV or born-digital, e.g.: Born Digitial Archive Cataloguing and Description – Digital Preservation Coalition.

Please describe the approach you will be taking to catalogue the collection, and how this will improve access to the material. Please include information about your chosen method and level of cataloguing, standards and best practice guidance being followed, your proposed cataloguing system, work on sorting and arranging the collection, and the proposal for storage and packaging.

Throughout your response, please describe how your approach will lead to improved access to the collection.

The following prompt questions may be helpful in writing your answer:

Method and Level of Description: are you adopting a particular methodology for cataloguing, and why have you chosen it? What level will you catalogue the collection to? Why is this level of description and method the right choice for your collection? Are you trying anything that is new or different compared to normal, and if so, why – and what impact do you think this will have?
Standards: what cataloguing, indexing or other standards you are adopting to undertake the cataloguing project? How will you ensure that these standards will be adhered to? For example, will your project be delivered in accord with ISAD (G) ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description – Second edition – ICA and/ or any other standards (both internal to your organisation and sectoral)?
Systems: what system (e.g. software system) are you using to catalogue your collection?
Sorting and arrangement: has the collection already been sorted and arranged? If not, please describe any necessary preparatory work.
Storage and Packaging: will there be any improvements to how the collection is packaged and stored? Will there be any location changes for the collection once catalogued, and why?
Access: how will you make the newly catalogued collection accessible? Will the project enable access that was previously not possible? Is there anything new and innovative that you will be doing to maximise access to the collection?

All Cataloguing grantees are required to make their collection available on The National Archives’ catalogue, Discovery; whilst this can be mentioned in an application, it should not be the only way in which you will make your collection accessible.

Audiences, engagement, and impact

We define impact as “the demonstrable contribution that a project makes.” Tell us what changes that having a catalogue will bring to you, for your archive service, your staff, for the archive sector or for wider society. Use this section to detail and describe how you will use the 20% of funding (minimum) for audience engagement, who your audiences are (both existing and potentially new audiences), and what will change for them as a result of the project. We want to understand what differences your proposal will make, what changes you anticipate happening and who will be affected.

Ask yourself ‘what will happen?’ What are the short-term, medium-term and long-term changes that the project will bring about, and who will be affected? Is the change physical (new resources, materials or capital), procedural, or cultural?

Impacts can be felt on a personal level: you and your team may learn new skills and practices, or it can affect the whole institution, for example in improving the ways of working with the archive service. It can also be societal, in enabling access to “hidden” knowledge, helping people learn from the past and bring innovation to the future. Impacts can also be institutional: a Cataloguing Grant can raise the profile of an archive service, and improve ways of working at an institution; and they can be far wider, with impacts beyond the organisation.

It is important to consider how the grant will have an impact beyond its own duration, and create a sustainable legacy of change: is this project part of a longer-term strategic plan, and how does it align with other activities or the future direction of the organisation?

Archives Revealed requires applicants to ringfence at least 20% of the total grant value for engagement activities. We wish to support organisations to ensure that everyone has opportunities to learn, develop new skills and explore heritage, regardless of background or personal circumstance. The costs of staff can be included in this 20% ringfencing.

Here, we would like to understand what and how you propose to engage audiences with your collection during and/or after the cataloguing process. Archives Revealed understands each organisation, and their respective audiences and circumstances, are different. We are seeking proposals that show a developed understanding of the audience for the collection and how best to encourage their participation, during and after the project.

For the purposes of Archives Revealed’s funding, the programme defines engagement activities as anything that will enable the public to engage with the collection. This can include digitisation activities, however, you will need to be clear in your application how digitisation will be used to enable access. Digitised materials must be openly licensed in line with The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s digital good practice guidance.

The users of archives can be diverse, with audiences having different motivations and needs from your service. You are best placed to understand who your audiences are, and who they could be: it might be helpful to explain the change you want to bring about, in how existing users interact with your service and collections, and/or in how you reach new audiences. You may wish to provide demographic or other data about your potential audiences in this section.

Some ideas you may wish to consider when developing your application:

Is there the potential to involve users in the cataloguing process, for example, are there volunteering opportunities? If the project will have a steering group, who will be represented on it and how will they reflect the users of the archive?
Who are your audiences, both existing and new? Do you have any data to support this? For example, do you collect statistics on current users of the archives or have access to demographic data on underrepresented users of your archive that you would like to engage with? Are your proposed activities appropriate for these audiences and how can you evidence that they are?
Sustainability of engagement work: whilst a new website or a one-off display may have many merits in attracting audiences, how do you plan to maintain that in the future without Archives Revealed funding?
What has worked for others? Are there other comparable archives and/ or heritage services that have done successful engagement activities that you could learn from? What’s the most memorable interaction you’ve ever had with heritage and how can you replicate that for others? Sometimes they can be unexpected, and this can require creative thinking.
Is your proposal inclusive, and have you considered accessibility of your archive when planning? Will all people be able to interact and benefit from the project or are there physical or other barriers to engagement that you will need to plan for? Alternatively, if the collection is not appropriate for all audiences, for example, if it contains upsetting or graphic materials not suitable for younger audiences, how will you manage this and ensure the well-being of your communities?
How is the collection best presented and shared with audiences? There is a huge benefit to being able to physically engage with records, but this also brings challenges. Archives Revealed can fund digitisation and does not make a distinction between online and in-person engagement, although we would like to understand why your approach best suits the needs of your audiences. Digitised materials must be openly licensed in line with The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s digital good practice guidance.

Impacts and engagement can take many different forms, and every project will have a different response: but a strong answer will always clearly outline what outcomes it is seeking to create, and how it plans to engage with beneficiaries and audiences, inside and outside of the archive service which is applying. It will be possible to know whether this has been successful by the end of the project’s activities.

Feasibility, delivery and management

When awarding a grant, we need to be confident that you are able to deliver every aspect of your project, that you have the correct infrastructure, approach to project management and that your organisation and team have considered, planned and resourced the project in order to facilitate and encourage excellence in cataloguing.

Please do refer to the guidance section on eligible and ineligible costs, as well as matched funding recommendations above, when putting together your budget and workplan. Proposals including ineligible costs may be rejected from consideration. The National Archives reserves the right to offer conditional or partial funding of a project. We require that at least 20% of the grant’s value be allocated to public engagement activities.

Use this section to fully explain how you intend to carry out the project’s activities, spend its budget and achieve its delivery milestones. We would also like to see that you have considered the environment and the impacts of your project.

We would like to understand in detail what you are proposing to do, who will deliver the project, what skills they have and why these are appropriate. Please tell us who has overall responsibility for the project, and who else is involved. Will you be working with a professional archivist? What types of posts do you need, how are they paid and contracted? (We ask that salaries are budgeted with reference to the Archive and Records association salary guidance: Salary Recommendations from our Pay Review Group — Archives & Records Association).

Are new staff being hired, or are you using existing staff; if so, how are their existing responsibilities being covered? Are you using volunteers, and how will they be managed and supported? What role(s) will the volunteers have on the project, for example will they be assisting the cataloguer or guiding the project by membership of a leadership or steering group?

Please provide a rationale for any non-staff expenditure that you need to deliver your project, and how you plan to procure any resources you need, if you don’t have access to them already. Please ensure that your costings are as accurate as possible, if helpful you can include quotes and other evidence of costing as supporting documents.

If your project involves multiple institutions, tell us how the relationship between the partners will be managed and governed, and how work will be divided and structured.

Tell us how you are going to manage your project, to ensure that it keeps on track – you may wish to attach a Gantt Chart or similar project planning tool, particularly for larger projects. We will ask you to outline at least three key milestones that need to be achieved to ensure your project’s success.

Finally, you will want to think about the risks that your project faces, and what mitigations you will be putting in place to address them.