New Heritage Fund Campaign Supports Dynamic Collections

The National Lottery Heritage Fund's new Dynamic Collections campaign supports collecting organisations across the UK to become more inclusive and resilient, with a focus on engagement, re-interpretation and collections management.

The Heritage Fund supports museums, libraries, archives and other organisations to make the most of their collections. Their new Dynamic Collections campaign will support collecting organisations by bringing together project funding through open programmes, digital resources and knowledge sharing.

It is designed to address long-term challenges in the sector, many of which have been made worse by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It will also help organisations build on innovative ideas and trends developed over the past few years, particularly in digital engagement.

The campaign also acts on the demand for collections to evolve to meet the changing needs of the communities around them, and to reflect more people's history and experiences. 

The campaign has three funding priorities for collections – engagement, re-interpretation and better collections management. 

For collections management, the Heritage Fund want to fund projects that will bring new solutions to long-term issues in collections care and use, leading to more efficient collections management and development. This is an excellent opportunity for conservators and heritage scientists.

For example, they will fund:

• collections reviews leading to strategic development and/or rationalisation
• new partnerships and/or management arrangements between organisations to share infrastructure, expertise or other resources
• loans programmes to enable greater public access to collections
• projects using digital technology to better manage collections and stores 

This includes digitisation and cataloguing work as part of a wider project, where it supports engagement and re-interpretation.

To find out more about the programme, go to the Heritage Fund website.