National Lottery Grants for Heritage 2021-22
Applications are now open for National Lottery Grants for Heritage from £3,000 to £5million, prioritising heritage projects that will boost the local economy, encourage skills development and job creation, support wellbeing, create better places to live, work and visit, and improve the resilience of organisations working in heritage.
The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic means we have revised our approach to what we will fund. We have created a supplementary document that sets out our Priorities for National Lottery Grants for Heritage for 2021-22. This is a formal part of the programme guidance until April 2022.
In short, we will prioritise heritage projects that will:
- boost the local economy
- encourage skills development and job creation
- support wellbeing
- create better places to live, work and visit
- improve the resilience of organisations working in heritage
Every project will need to achieve our inclusion outcome, ‘a wider range of people will be involved in heritage’.
We will also expect all projects to demonstrate that they are building long-term environmental sustainability into their plans, as appropriate.
Pre-application advice is available for projects over £10,000. If you would like help to develop your idea before you start your full application, you can submit a project enquiry form or Expression of Interest Form (for larger grants) via our application portal. If you previously submitted an Expression of Interest Form before the suspension of our programmes in March 2020, you will now have to submit a new form which addresses our revised priorities 2021-22.
Three different levels of grants are available for anyone looking to connect people and communities to heritage in the UK, with varying criteria:
grants of £3,000 to £10,000
open to not-for-profit organisations or private owners of heritage
projects lasting up to one year
rolling deadline, decision eight weeks (or slightly longer) after application
grants from £10,000 to £250,000
open to not-for-profit organisations, private owners of heritage or partnerships
projects lasting up to five years
rolling deadline, decision eight weeks (or slightly longer) after application
for applications of £100,000 to £250,000 you must contribute at least 5% of your project costs
grants from £250,000 to £5million
open to not-for-profit organisations or partnerships led by a not-for-profit organisation
projects lasting up to five years
Expression of Interest must be submitted before full application
quarterly deadline, 12-week turnaround
you must contribute at least 5% of your project costs for grants up to £1million and at least 10% for grants of £1million or more.
This programme will run until at least April 2022.