Grant Directories

The Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund provides financial support for short-term loans of significant artworks and artefacts to regional and smaller museums in the UK. The programme aims to enhance public access to high-profile objects and strengthen relationships between museums. This initiative broadens museum collections' appeal, fosters institutional partnerships, and brings long-lasting benefits to borrowers, lenders, and audiences. Main grants range from £5,000 to £35,000, with smaller grants up to £5,000 for research and development activities.

The Arts & Culture Impact Fund brings together public, private and charitable funding to provide affordable repayable finance to the UK’s arts, culture and heritage organisations able to demonstrate measurable positive social impact. The funding could be used, among other things, to acquire new assets, improve built infrastructure, develop new ventures or scale up existing revenue streams.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund uses money raised by players of the National Lottery to fund projects that connect people and communities to the national, regional and local heritage of the UK. This could include oral history; cultural traditions; nature; natural and designed landscapes; community archaeology; historic buildings, monuments and environments; collections of objects, books or documents in museums, libraries or archives; etc.  Grants range from £3,000 to £5,000,000.

The Cultural Impact Development Fund will provide a total of £3.7 million of small-scale repayable Finance to socially driven arts and cultural organisations between 2018 and 2023. Cultural Impact Development Fund will pioneer the use of financial incentives to drive the achievement of social impact targets in its investment portfolio. Unsecured loans are available of between £25,000 and £150,000 with repayment terms of one to five years and interest rates ranging between 5.5% and 8.5%. The fund aims to: Enable risk taking, ambitious organisations in the arts and cultural sector to take on small-scale repayable finance in order to achieve social outcomes; Increase the capability of arts and cultural organisations to articulate, achieve, monitor and evaluate their intended social impact.

Localgiving has teamed up with the Postcode Community Trust to provide the Magic Little Grants programme. The fund provides small charities and community groups with grants of £500 for projects that meet either of the following themes: Overcoming barriers to participation in physical activities in creative ways; Increasing social cohesion through developing access to sports and other recreational activities. 

Arts Council England champion, develop and invest in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives. The National Lottery Project Grants scheme is an open access programme for arts, museums and libraries projects, the fund will support thousands of individual artists, community and cultural organisations and aims to create and sustain quality work and help people across England to engage with arts and culture. Grants of between £1,000 and £100,000 are available to projects lasting up to three years that are focused on the following artforms and disciplines: Music, Theatre, Dance, Visual arts, Literature, Combined arts and Museum practice. The programme supports development by allowing artists, cultural practitioners and organisations to work in new ways and to get their work out to new audiences. Applications must meet the programme’s four criteria: Quality, Public engagement, Finance and Management.

Music for All is a charity that believes that music is an extremely powerful means of communication, can help to break down cultural barriers and that everyone should have the opportunity to learn to play music. The charity provides funding for individuals to help them to access both musical instruments and lessons to help them to fulfil their musical dreams. It also provides funding for community music groups and educational organisations who have projects that aim to bring music to their community. Grants to groups aim to help them to fulfil their potential and become truly sustainable music programmes. Typical grants for groups are normally in the region of £2500, there are no maximum grant amounts detailed for individuals. There are normally three rounds of funding each year.

The Baring Foundation is an independent grantmaking trust that distributes grants to UK charities. The Arts Programme is aimed at promoting the role of creativity in the lives of people with mental health problems The Foundation believes that everyone has a right to take part in cultural activities and that these also bring benefits in terms of personal health and well-being, as well as community development. Grants under this programme are made by invitation, unless an open programme is advertised on the website.

The Frazer Trust makes grants in a wide range of areas including special/primary and secondary schools. In recent years almost a quarter of funding has gone to medical and other research. During 2019/2020 the Trust awarded 360 grants with a total value of £553,350 to organisations in the UK.

The Sir George Martin Trust supports projects located in West and North Yorkshire in a number of categories which include Children and young people; Church appeals - church outreach only; Countryside, environment, green issues; Hospices; Mental well-being; Museums and historic buildings; Music and the arts; Older people; Physical and learning disabilities; Schools, education, universities - must be outreach work; Social welfare;Sports for disadvantaged communities. The Trust prefers to make one-off grants available for capital rather than revenue needs or projects. Grants are generally in the £1000 - £3,000 region.

P Leigh Bramwell Trust provides grants for the advancement of the Christian religion, education, the RNLI, the advancement of health or saving lives and any other legal charitable institutions. Grants are made across the UK but priority is given to North West of England especially Bolton and Manchester

First World War: then and now is a Heritage Lottery Fund Scheme (HLF)  that provides grants of £3,000 to £10,000 for communities to mark the Centenary of the First World War. HLF want to fund projects which enable communities to understand more about the heritage of the First World War and benefit a wide range of people. In particular,  HLF would like to help young people aged 11–25 to take an active part in the  Centenary commemorations.

The Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places Fund will support projects in places where involvement in the arts is significantly below the national average. The Creative People and Places Fund will operate over three years and will invest in around 15 programmes of activity that use radical new approaches to developing excellent, inspiring and sustainable arts experiences for communities not currently engaging with the arts.  The Arts Council is keen to encourage long-term collaborations between local communities and arts organisations, museums, libraries and local authorities. 

The Armourers & Brasiers' Company offers grants to UK schools to support science education. The grants provide £600 for primary schools and £1,000 for secondary schools, enabling them to purchase science equipment, run enrichment projects, or participate in science events and competitions. The programme aims to enhance practical science learning, with a focus on materials science. Schools can apply for these grants annually but cannot reapply in consecutive years.

Each year, the JMK Trust provides talented young and emerging theatre directors with awards, guidance and development opportunities. Applicants must be UK residents under 35 years of age, must not have directed more than two professional productions, including fringe, have professional training in performing arts and must not be a student. As the basis of their proposal, applicants must choose one play from a new list of plays available by emailing jo@jmktrust.org. The Award constitutes a production budget of £25,000 plus space for your production at the Orange Tree Theatre. Runner up prizes of £2,000 may also be awarded.

The Alan Babette Sainsbury Charitable Fund Grant provides grants to registered charities that focus on: arts and education projects which help young people to achieve their potential, particularly within Southwark, from where proposals are particularly encouraged; support for UK charities which defend civil liberties and human rights; projects in the developing world, especially Africa, which maximise educational and employment opportunities for young people; areas of scientific and medical research on Type 1 diabetes. The funding amount is discretionary and applications can be submitted at any time.

The Field Studies Council is an independent educational charity committed to raising awareness about the natural world. They work through a network of 17 residential and day Centres in the UK providing courses for schools and colleges at all levels in addition to adult Individuals & Families courses, outreach education, training and consultancy. The Kids Fund aims to bring environmental understanding to disadvantaged young people by attending a course at a Field Studies Council centre. It helps disadvantaged young people to attend a course who may otherwise be excluded due to some form of disadvantage - health, mobility, deprivation or financial. Funding will normally be up to 75% of the cost of your group's course to an FSC Field Centre. Applications can be submitted at any time with decisions being made in February, June and October.

The Edward Gostling Foundation provides grants to other UK charities with the aim of enhancing quality of life for people in need, more particularly those living on very low incomes who have a physical and/or a mental disability or the elderly. Grants are available under the following 4 themes: Health and Wellbeing; Independent Living at Home; Respite; Transition.

Westhill support projects with strong underlying Christian Values that transform peoples lives, foster empathy between communities and build bridges between people of diverse backgrounds and cultures. Grants have been made to a very wide range of successful projects in local communities in churches and cathedrals, hospitals and hospices; and in higher and a wide range of further educational institutions both in the UK and overseas. Most grants range between £500 and £20,000. Larger sums for projects running over two years are considered but matching funding is sometimes advised. Applications can be submitted at any time and these are assessed on a quarterly basis.

The charity aims to fight financial and consumer illiteracy and is dedicated to educating and informing adults and children about consumer and debt issues. It provides grants of up to £500 to help individuals to eradicate this illiteracy through self-development or innovative projects. Eligible groups can apply for grants of up to £7,500. Using funding provided by annual donations from the MoneySavingExpert.com website and proceeds from sales of books written by the website's founder Martin Lewis, MSE Charity aims to help communities break the cycle of debt by helping people to become more financially aware.

The Baily Thomas Charitable Fund provides grants to support the care, relief, and research related to learning disabilities, including autism. Grants are available for both general projects and research initiatives, aimed at improving the lives of individuals affected by these conditions. Eligible applicants include charities, schools, and research institutions. The fund focuses on projects that deliver long-term benefits in the area of learning disabilities.

Awards for All, England offers grants of between £300 and £20,000 for projects that improve communities, and the lives of people within them. It is for voluntary and community groups, schools and health organisations, parish and town councils.  To do this Awards for All fund projects that meet one or more of the following outcomes: People have better chances in life - with better access to training and development to improve their life skills; Stronger communities - with more active citizens working together to tackle their problems; Improved rural and urban environments - which communities are better able to access and enjoy; and Healthier and more active people and communities.