Heritage Innovation Fund

The Heritage Innovation Fund is a pilot initiative for experimenters, collaborators and learners from across all parts of heritage, across the UK. We’re looking for people who want to play a leading role in pioneering solutions for making the heritage workforce fit for the future.

Innovation is not supposed to be the solution to everything – it should be about setting you up to think about what might be in 20 years’ time.

Natural heritage professional

It is designed to support organisations to explore, test and grow the new ways of working needed to support the future of our diverse and varied heritage.

The funding can be used to support organisations to find practical solutions that will help them – and also be shared across the sector.

Applicants must be:

  • committed to the innovation process
  • prepared to learn and experiment
  • willing to share their failures as well as their successes

What do we mean by “new ways of working”?

We mean issues that relate to the future workforce (whether paid or voluntary). These issues impact whether organisations have the volume of staff and the skills to meet future demands on, and ambitions for, the UK’s diverse heritage.

We are aware that these might be connected to complex and wider issues of diversity, inclusion, relevance, audiences and interpretation.

How will the Heritage Innovation Fund work?

The Heritage Innovation Fund is a pilot initiative. It is intended to build innovation capacity within, across and between different parts of heritage around a shared priority challenge area – the workforce, skills and ways of working needed for the future.

More here