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Context and scope

The National Archives’ Resilience Grants programme has been designed to support archive services, organisations with archives, and archives networks to be adaptable, resilient and sustainable, creating lasting solutions that enable them to respond to change, and contribute to communities and the economy.

Archives Resilience projects could include (but are not limited to):

  • proposals that would lead to increased organisational stability, including long-term organisational, financial and strategic planning
  • increased staffing capacity and enhanced skills
  • reduced costs
  • increased income
  • improving capacity to develop, care for and enrich collections, physically and digitally
  • ensuring that collections are safely preserved, including digitally
  • work on diversity, equity and inclusion
  • responses to climate change, such as developing energy-efficiency within an archives service
  • strategic development of existing archive networks or establishment of new networks with a clear strategic focus

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 and Record Association’s Archives Service Resilience Indicator Tool, which is designed to provide archive services with a quick methodology for assessing resilience, and identifying gaps or areas for development.

You may also wish to investigate Archive Service Accreditation, the UK standard for good practice across archives services. A Resilience Grant and/or the Resilience Indicator Tool could be used as preparatory actions for an Accreditation application, and have been designed using the same standards and frameworks.

You can download the Archives Sector Resilience Indicator and guidance notes from the Archives and Records Association.

To apply for a Resilience Grant, please complete an online application form.

If you have any questions about Resilience Grants, please contact us via email: archivegrants@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Programme overview

The Resilience Grants programme invites archives services, organisations with archives and archive networks throughout the United Kingdom to apply for resilience-building projects of up to £20,000, with no minimum level of funding required. It is a one-stage application, completed through an online application form.

The grant will fund projects lasting up to one year. The grant programme runs twice per year, with deadlines in around January and July.

We ask that applicants submit, as a supporting document, a completed Archives and Records Association Archives Service Resilience Indicator Tool, which is designed to provide archive services with a quick methodology for assessing resilience and identifying gaps or areas for development.

You can download the Archives Sector Resilience Indicator, and guidance notes from the Archives and Records Association.