National Lottery Heritage Fund: Heritage Innovation Fund

Overview

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

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 they mean by "new ways of working"?

They 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.

They 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.

The Heritage Innovation Fund is intended to involve three phases.

Phase 1: Explore

Explore is for organisations at the early ideas stage. This phase will focus on defining a clear problem statement and helping you to develop potential solutions for testing in practice.

They recommend taking a look at Nesta's Helping innovation happen tool which can help with identifying opportunities and challenges and generating ideas.

This phase will provide access to: 

• grants of up to £25,000 to cover your time and activities during this phase (six months)
• expertise to help you develop your ideas and skills through a structured package of support 
• peer learning and exchange in a cohort

Subject to Board approval, further grants from the Heritage Innovation Fund may be available to support the following steps in the innovation process.

Phase 2: Test

This phase will offer support to put promising prototypes and ideas into practice to gather evidence of what works.

Phase 3: Grow

This phase will support you to implement findings more widely, embedding, sharing and rolling out good practice across the heritage sector.

The Heritage Innovation Fund will help to generate and nurture ideas that aim to ensure the heritage workforce has the capacity and capabilities required to meet future needs.

In their 2022 UK Heritage Pulse survey, 54% of respondents wanted greater support to innovate and test new approaches. The Heritage Innovation Fund is part of their wider response to this need.

Who can apply?

They are accepting applications from heritage organisations of any size or type, anywhere in the UK.

These could include: 

• not-for-profit organisations

• local authorities

• public sector organisations or private owners of heritage (with a workforce)

What can they fund?

In the Explore phase, we have commissioned a specialist innovation support programme to sit alongside a grant of up to £25,000.

The funding can be used to cover the costs of staff time to deliver a Heritage Innovation Fund project over a six-month period.

These costs could include:

• salary of key staff member or backfill costs if applicable 
• travel and subsistence costs associated with attending in-person events or delivering activities as part of the programme

Up to 10% of the funding can be used to cover the costs of essential materials and equipment needed while researching your project. This could include the purchase of essential devices and IT equipment.

What are they looking for?

In your Explore phase application you must clearly set out:

• how you will explore and define your idea and problem statement  
• how your work will focus on the further strategic development, governance and financial planning connected to your idea and how you will engage and involve relevant groups  
• how National Lottery funding, expert advice and being connected to a group of peers with a common goal will strengthen your organisation over the longer term

Questions to consider

• What is the workforce challenge that you want to focus on?
• What are the different elements of the challenge, and why have they not been tackled before?
• What are the short, medium and longer-term results of not solving this challenge?
• Who needs to be involved (internally and/or externally)? How might you find out more about their perspectives?
• How will this exploration relate to ongoing work in your organisation?
• What support do you have, and will you need, for the early discovery work to be effective? This could be from your organisation, the Heritage Fund, and/or other organisations or people.

Topics potentially to explore:

Please consider this quote.

"Innovation can’t happen when you pre-describe it... We should instead set criteria that finds ability, appetite and capacity – rather than being prescriptive about the experiment."

Sector support professional

Their three key criteria for this fund align with this thinking. They want to hear about what challenges and inspires you about future ways of working for heritage.

Some topics raised in their research are:

• how to diversify the future heritage workforce through exploring new recruitment approaches, new roles, connections with other sectors and places
• reimagining the future of volunteering
• overcoming retention challenges through progression routes and pathways, enhanced health and wellbeing offers, flexible working, etc
• making the most of new technologies and approaches that streamline core processes and create better conditions for staff and volunteers

What can you apply for?

The Explore phase of the Heritage Innovation Fund will provide grantees up to £25,000 and six months’ coaching and innovation support to explore your challenge and develop some initial ideas to prototype.

What you can expect from them

• access to a cohort of other Heritage Innovation Fund grantees
• access to innovation experts who will coach and support you
• funding to cover staff time to explore the problem you are facing and begin to frame potential solutions
• funding for the costs of associated activities in this exploration phase

What they expect from you

Successful applicants will take part in an innovation learning and development programme, led by The Young Foundation

This will consist of:

• six 3.5hour online sessions (approximately one per month) with all programme participants
• individual/team coaching support over six months

This support will help individuals and teams to build their confidence, skills and capabilities in innovation practice.

Taking part in the support programme is key to you receiving your grant funding. It should be factored into your resource planning, alongside the work on your innovation projects as part of the project.

Senior support

They also expect you to have support from senior leaders within your organisation. They ask all applicants to name a senior leader who will commit time to supporting your work and advocating for it.