Heritage Lottery Fund: Great Place Scheme
Overview
Aims
The Great Place Scheme will enable heritage and cultural organisations to change how they work together, and with organisations in other places, to allow heritage and culture to contribute more to meeting local environmental, economic and social aspirations.
What will the Great Place Scheme do?
To achieve the following the Great Place Scheme will invest in between two and four places across Northern Ireland to:
- Grow the heritage and cultural sectors to boost partnerships and maximise their positive environmental, economic and social improvements.
- To co-operate and create new partnerships in order to lever resources into the Northern Ireland.
- Develop associations between heritage and place-based initiatives allowing Northern Ireland to put heritage and culture at the heart of their future vision.
How much funding is available?
You can apply for between £100,000 and £500,000 for activity to be delivered over a period of up to three years.
Geographical focus
The aim in Northern Ireland is to support successful applications from a range of separate places in order to participate in the programme. The Great Place Scheme is a pilot.
They invite you to think creatiively about which geographies you might operate in. This could be across more than one council, or the relationship between an urban area and adjoining rural areas. You will need to work out the size and the boundaries of the ‘place’ where your project will be delivered. A case should be made on why the geography you have chosen is relevant and meaningful in the light of the Great Place Scheme.
The size of a place should be studied to ensure ample resources and impact can be made through the project. A place could be:
- A consortium of local council areas
- A single local council area
- A city or town and its hinterland
- A grouping of rural towns / villages
- A landscape designation or conservation area
- Wards from one neighbourhood or different neighbourhoods
Who can apply?
Partnerships including (but not limited to):
- Museums and libraries • Historic environment and natural heritage organisations
- Community / voluntary groups
- Arts organisations
- Social enterprises
- Local Councils
- Housing Associations
- Other national strategic agencies
- Other public sector organisations
- Destination organisations
- Further and higher education institutions
- NHS Health Trusts
- Business Enterprise Zones
- Commercial businesses
One of the not-for-profit organisations in the partnership will need to be nominated as the lead partner.
What they will fund
- This is an activities-based programme and they will not be funding any large-scale capital work e.g. building refurbishment, habitat conservation or gallery re-fit.
- Some small-scale capital expenditure may be considered for support only if it is needed for the delivery of specific activities, e.g. creation of spaces for ‘meanwhile’ or ‘pop-up’ uses.
In NI they anticipate that most of the schemes we fund will deliver activities that fit into the following four broad areas:
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Talking to people
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Exploring new ideas
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Creating tools to realise step change
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Building Capacity
One of the key outputs, from the schemes they support, will be the production of a heritage and cultural strategy for your place.
They will also expect to fund a coordinator role to facilitate close partnership working between organisations and activities across the scheme area. In England, for example, the 16 pilot schemes will now be carrying out a range of activities including:
- exploring new ways to include culture and heritage in the provision of local education or health services;
- research into the contribution made by culture and heritage to local economies;
- funding for people working in culture and heritage to build networks and increase their skills;
- exploring and piloting new ways of financing cultural organisations;
- encouraging the use of existing powers that allow communities to support their local culture, such as the community right to bid or listing local landmarks as assets of community value; and
- development of local strategies that maximise the community benefit that local culture and heritage can deliver.
For full guidelines see here