The Archives Resilience grants programme will invite archives throughout the United Kingdom to apply for resilience-building projects of up to £15,000, with no minimum level of funding: we have funded impactful projects of only £100 in previous calls.
We are seeking to support archives in creating sustainable solutions that enable them to respond to and manage change. These might include:
- proposals that would lead to increased organisational stability
- increased staffing capacity and enhanced skillsets
- reduced costs
- increased income
- improving your capacity to develop, care for and enrich your collection
- extending your reach into communities and growing your audiences
- ensuring collections are safely preserved, including digitally
- strategic planning
- diversity, equity and inclusion
- responses to climate change, such as developing energy-efficiency within an archives service.
The funded activity is intended to increase the sector’s ability to safeguard and make accessible significant collections throughout the UK.
This new fund builds on the success of our previous funds, the COVID-19 Archives fund and the Records at Risk fund, and responds to sectoral priorities identified in our funding survey from summer 2022.
Each applicant is likely to have different needs and approaches to building organisational resilience. To help organisations tailor their proposals to their own challenges and opportunities, we ask that applicants make use of the Archives Service Resilience Indicator Tool2, which is designed to provide archive services with a quick methodology for assessing resilience and identify gaps or areas for development.
You can download the Archives Sector Resilience Indicator here, and guidance notes from the Archives and Records Association can be found here: Archive_Indicator_guidance_notes.pdf (squarespace.com).
Archives Service Resilience Indicator Tool2: The Archives Service Resilience Indicator Tool was developed by the Archives and Records Association, Archives and Records Council Wales, National Records of Scotland, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Scottish Council on Archives, The National Archives and the Welsh Government through its Museums Archives and Libraries Division, as partners of the UK Archive Service Accreditation Standard