Apply for a Skills Bursary for Archives

About Skills Bursaries for Archives

Programme context

Our approach to our leadership role is a collaborative one: supporting partnerships and working to encourage a sustainable and innovative sector.

We want to prepare the archives sector for the future, in an uncertain world. We will invest in the skills of the archives sector workforce; in research, to lead innovation in technology and archival practice; and in engagement, to connect archives with changing societies in places across England and Wales.

In particular, we want to provide funding that will confront the challenges of today: preserving and sharing the digital record, reducing our environmental impact and adapting to climate change, and helping the archives sector become more diverse, equitable and inclusive.

To support archivists in building the skills needed for the future, The National Archives is delighted to be offering bursaries for the first time, for archivists seeking to access training, career professional development or mentoring that would not usually be available in their own organisational development programmes.

Funded Skills Bursaries for Archives

Find out more about projects that have been awarded Skills Bursaries for Archives.

How to apply

Eligibility

Skills Bursaries for Archives are open to archivists and heritage professionals working with archival collections in England or Wales. We cannot fund organisations based in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or whose collections are held outside of the United Kingdom.

The programme is open to any individual working with a recognised archive collection. This principally includes employees, but may also include trustees or volunteers.

The programme is open to all public sector bodies, not-for-profit organisations including registered charities, and for-profit organisations including business archives.

We use the definition of an archive collection as given within the Archive Service Accreditation Scheme:

We welcome group and network applications – the award limit of £1,000 is per person, and we will consider applications for group training and learning, provided this limit is not exceeded. For example, a group of five archivists could bid for a grant of £5,000, to organise a shared training session.

We would not usually expect to fund any individual more than once in a financial year.

What the programme can fund

Skills Bursaries for Archives provide funding for archivists and heritage professionals in England and Wales to access skills development, mentoring, continuing professional development and training. All costs proposed in the application should be directly related to the above.

The purpose of the funding scheme is to support the development of the skills needed for future development of the archives sector, with a focus on resilience, digital transformation, environmental sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion. Therefore, we will not fund:

• Core archival practice, e.g. the Master’s degree in Archives and Records Management or Level 7 Archives and Records Manager Apprenticeship
• Other core business or IT skills, offered as part of organisational development programmes.

Each bursary is designed to enable access to skills, in whatever way is most suitable: eligible costs include the costs of training or conference attendance, along with any necessary travel or subsistence costs; or the cost of external trainers or consultants.

The programme cannot fund:

• Overheads, full cost recovery or management fees
• Salary of the applicant/bursary recipient
• Costs incurred prior to the date of any award offer from The National Archives.

Match funding

The programme can supply up to 100% of training costs, however we strongly encourage applicants to contribute from their own resources, where possible. This could be in the form of a cash contribution, confirmed funding from external sources or an in-kind contribution.

Please note that grants will only be paid to organisations, typically your employer – bursaries will not be paid to individuals directly.

Accessibility and reasonable adjustments

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes providing support, in the form of reasonable adjustments, for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us.

You must contact us as early as possible in the application process.

Application deadlines

The Skills Bursaries for Archives programme is currently closed. For alternative funding, you may be eligible for our Community Hub Skills Bursaries.

Community Hub Skills Bursaries

This programme offers up to £1,000 for the development of skills and expertise in community heritage engagement.

When open, this funding is available on a rolling basis, with funds available for rapid distribution.

As the fund is designed to enable access to training that may be arranged at short notice, your grant will be reviewed by the Grants and Funding Office at The National Archives for eligibility, and then shared with the panel who will meet on a monthly basis.

Applications need to be received two weeks in advance of the panel meeting for consideration. Late applications will be considered at the next months panel.

Plan your application

We ask that all applications be submitted via our online form. You can download a Word document version of the form to help you prepare.

Submit your application

Assessment criteria

Scoring system

Each application will be scored numerically against a set of criteria, according to the following scale:

Applications are assessed by a panel of experts, from The National Archives.

The criteria information provided below 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.

1. Need

Tell us why your project is needed, and why it is needed now.

You might want to tell us about a particular problem or challenge which you are seeking to address. This might be (for Records at Risk grants), an immediate issue, such as a physical or organisational threat to a collection: what is the collection’s condition, and is it at risk from mould, pests, damage or obsolescence? What is its environment, for physical or digital storage? Is the organisation holding the collection at risk, from closure or liquidation?

Or it may be a longer-term problem, such as a longer-term issue with your collection or archive service, which can only be addressed by an investment in skills, outside expertise, equipment or staff time. Have you identified (for Skills Bursaries) a particular skills gap, such as in digital transformation, environmental sustainability, or equity, diversity and inclusion – or (for Resilience Grants), a weaker area on the Archives Service Resilience Indicator?

You may also want to capitalise on particular opportunities: whether there are local strategies or wider initiatives which make the project timely, or whether there is other funding or partnerships which are immediately available. What will happen if you do not get a grant from us?

It’s important to outline why the grant provides a solution or partial solution to the challenge, and why it is important for the investment to occur now. It may be helpful to include evidence supporting this answer: for example, you could include photographs or supporting letters.

Every archive service will have different needs, both short-term and long-term: use this response to tell us what they are.

2. Impact

We define impact as “the demonstrable contribution that a project makes.” Tell us why your project is going to change things: for you, for your archive service, for your users and audiences, for the archives sector, or for society. We want to understand what difference your proposal will make, and what change will result from the project, and for whom.

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?

Impact should scale according to the size of the grant being provided: for smaller grants, impact may be personal (new skills or learning), or institutional (such as improved ways of working within your archive service). For larger grants, strong applications will evidence impact beyond their own organisation. Please read the question carefully, to ensure that you are focusing your answer on the relevant areas of focus.

It is also important to consider the impact that your project will have on users of your archive. 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 outline how you intend to engage with audiences outside of your institution: do you have plans or partnerships in place, to engage with (for example) your local community, researchers, schools or higher education?

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?

Impact 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.

3. Knowledge sharing

The National Archives has a leadership role for supporting the archive sector in England and across the UK, and often, we do this by knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing refers to the ways in which understanding, experiences and learning and resources generated by our grant programmes are disseminated.

There are many more archives in the sector than we can provide funding to: therefore, we would like to understand, as part of your proposal, how you intend to disseminate the knowledge generated, both internally to your organisation and externally to your audiences and the wider archives sector.

There are numerous ways to share knowledge, which can be formal and informal. If your project is going to generate materials, such as guidance papers, toolkits or research publications, you may want to consider who the audiences are, what opportunities there are to share the materials, and how you can amplify their impact. You may wish to present at academic conferences, events or workshops. There are also more informal knowledge sharing activities, such as social media. Video or visual content may make your dissemination more accessible.

Networks are an important way of sharing knowledge and outputs: you will score highly on this question if you want to work with others, to collaborate on shared challenges or share results. There are many opportunities to form or participate in networks of common practice, and use these as a means to share learnings.

The National Archives will also offer opportunities for knowledge sharing, through learning outcome reporting, and events such as webinars. Please focus your response on activities delivered in addition to the standard grant requirements.

Terms and conditions

Feedback and reapplication

The panel will score against the assessment criteria and provide feedback upon request. You will be given the opportunity to discuss your application with a member of The National Archives’ Grants and Funding team.

The National Archives’ decision regarding any application is final, and no appeal process is in place: it is the lead applicant’s responsibility to make sure that all of the information provided in the application is correct, their proposal meets the eligibility criteria, and all sections of the application are complete. Applications that are deemed ineligible will be excluded from consideration. Any points you wish to make should be made clearly and concisely in the application form.

The fund is designed to support urgent interventions, therefore if your application is unsuccessful, it will be unlikely to receive funding from any reapplication. However, the panel will endeavour to provide constructive feedback that enables positive solutions and clear next steps when requested. There are no restrictions on institutions submitting an application for a different project.

If you are awarded funding, The National Archives’ Grants and Funding team will contact you with a Grant Funding Agreement, which should be signed by an appropriate member of your organisation. For grants of a value lower then £20,000, 100% of the grant’s value will be paid to you up front, except in circumstances where The National Archives, in consultation with the grantee, deems that an alternative payment structure is necessary for the successful delivery of the funded activities. For grants of and over £20,000 in value, payments will usually be made in two instalments, at the start and end of your projects.

Grant conditions

All grantees will be required to comply with the Code of Conduct for Recipients of Government General Grants and all relevant legislation, as well as the monitoring and evaluation conditions outlined in previous sections. Further conditions may be outlined within the Grant Funding Agreement.

Reporting, evaluation and knowledge dissemination

Every applicant will be required to provide a project budget at application stage, using the costing template provided. Successful applicants must also provide a final project expenditure statement, based on actual expenditure. If final expenditure falls below the amount agreed in the Grant Funding Agreement, The National Archives may ask grantees to return any unspent funds at the end of the project. The National Archives will not cover the cost of any project spend above what has been agreed in the Grant Funding Agreement.

Alongside the final expenditure statement, all grantees will also be required to provide an end-of-project report, summarising key achievements against the activities outlined in the application. Some grantees may also be required to provide progress updates throughout the delivery of the project; this will be decided by on case-by-case basis at award stage, based on the complexity of the project proposed. All reporting requirements, including the timing and nature of reporting, will be made clear to successful applicants at award stage.

All grantees will be expected to take steps to address delivery issues or delays if they arise, and inform The National Archives as soon as possible, should an issue arise that poses a significant risk to the successful delivery of the funded activities within the agreed timescales. It is possible that The National Archives’ team may visit your project, during or after your grant (we will not visit applicants as part of the assessment process).

Grantees will also be required to demonstrate the benefits and key performance indicators (KPIs) that the competition is seeking to realise. Successful applicants will be required to provide evidence against these measures. The measures against which applicants will be required to report, and the reporting intervals, will be agreed at award stage. Whilst benefit & KPI reporting is compulsory for all applicants, performance against these indicators is for the purpose of measuring the impact of the funding programme only, and does not affect eligibility for the grant.

Our approach to monitoring and evaluation is informed by our vision: through our grant-making, we want to build evidence for investment in archives, celebrate grantees’ success, and advocate for the archives sector, while keeping our reporting requirements as flexible and accessible as possible.

Contact us

Should you have any questions about applying for a Skills Bursary for Archives, including about eligibility and reasonable adjustments, please email the Grants and Funding team.