About this grant scheme

Museums at Risk grants are available to any eligible museum within the South East of England facing an urgent or existential risk. You can apply for a maximum grant of £5000.

There are no specific criteria, but examples of eligible applications could include museums that are facing threats to their organisational existence (for example, a financial crisis or a major disagreement between trustees), or an urgent collections care need (for example, due to flood or mould that puts collections at risk).

You can preview all the questions by downloading a copy of the application form, but please do not use it to apply - complete the form below. If you are unable to use this form for technical reasons please email us at admin@mdse.org.uk.

Talk to us

It is a requirement that you talk to your local Museum Development Officer before submitting your grant application. This is to help improve the quality of your application, and improve your chances of success. The Museum Development Officer you talk to will also provide more context on your application to the assessment panel.

We recommend that you involve your Museum Development Officer closely in the design of your project and the writing of your application.

Application deadline

This is a 'rolling' grant scheme which means you can apply at any time. We will assess applications within 3 weeks of receipt.

Guidance

Before completing this form, please read the general grant guidance document which is available on the Museum Development South East website.

You can preview all the questions by downloading a copy of the application form from our website, but please do not use it to apply - complete the form below. If you are unable to use this form for technical reasons please email us at admin@mdse.org.uk.

Eligible museums

This grant is available to eligible museums within Arts Council England's South East region. Eligible museums are Accredited museums or those officially Working Towards Accreditation, which are not also National museums or ACE National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs).

For a definition of the South East, please see the list of eligible local authority areas on the home page of the MDSE website.

We regret we are unable to accept applications from National museums or NPOs, or from museums not in ACE's Accreditation Scheme.

We do not fund:

activity that has already been delivered, commissioned or ordered
permanent staff salaries (although we will consider requests to 'backfill' roles if it is integral to the delivery of the project)
general operating costs
contingency
internal admin and management fees to support the delivery of the project
hospitality costs over 10% of the grant total
For more information about our funding criteria, deadlines, assessment procedures and advice on how to complete the application, please read our Grant Guidance document, which is available to download from the Grants page on our website.

Terms and Conditions

As part of our funding Terms and Conditions, we ask our grant recipients to:

acknowledge Museum Development South East, Arts Council England and Art Fund in publicity material associated with the funded activity, using approved branding and logos.
complete the proposed activity within 12 months of receiving funds.
submit a Grant Report to MDSE within 12 months of receiving funds.
participate in the upcoming Annual Museum Survey commissioned by Museum Development England.
Failure to uphold the T&Cs may affect your museum's chance of securing further grants from MDSE for up to 12 months.

These grants are funded by Arts Council England.