Details

As part of the Museum Futures Programme, museums in Scotland can apply for a grant to develop activity that will improve the financial position of the museum. Applicants are required to complete the Organisational Health Checker in advance of applying for this fund.

The Innovation Fund will support museums to develop, trial, and implement activities that directly improve the museum’s financial position. The funder is keen to fund innovative, ambitious and experimental ideas that may be considered impossible or too risky without external funding.

Proposals to improve your museum’s financial position may include, but are not limited to:

• Use of your museum and outdoor spaces for event hire, including adapting your spaces to be more suitable for events, and hosting larger-scale events such as festivals
• Sharing your space or renting your buildings to other organisations, including adapting your space to be suitable for leasing
• Holiday accommodation, including camping, glamping and self-catered accommodation
• Collaboration with other organisations, including commercial partners, focused on generating income or sharing costs
• New tourism offers, including experience tourism, ancestry tourism, and voluntourism
• Events programmes, including events that are not related to your collection, such as board game evenings or murder mysteries hosted by the museum
• Workshops or courses, including for crafts and skills
• Developing profit-focused digital offers
• Innovation to retail offering, including the development of bespoke retail products or developing partnerships with local suppliers or artists
• Innovation to catering offer, including pop-up cafes and developing partnerships with local suppliers and organisations
• Developing a philanthropy strategy
• Energy generation to support community energy needs or trialling new forms of renewable energy

The fund can support the creation of new activity or significant development to existing activity that will directly improve the museum’s financial position. This includes upscaling or embedding ideas that have already been successfully trialled. The fund can also support initial testing of a new idea, including through feasibility studies and exploratory pilots.

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Geographical areas funded: Scotland

Fund type

Type of funding:

Grant

Type of cost:

Capital, Revenue

Fund award sizes

Minimum:

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Maximum:

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Notes on award amounts:

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Who can apply

Organisations that run Accredited museums in Scotland; organisations that run non-Accredited museums in Scotland, including museums with Working Towards Accreditation status; or formally constituted groups of museums (eg, geographical forums).

See fund website for detailed eligibility criteria.

When to apply

The Innovation Fund operates as a rolling fund, meaning you can apply at any time once you are ready. Applications will be assessed on a continual basis, with decisions provided within 8 weeks of submission.

The fund will close 20th January 2027 at 5pm, or earlier if all available funding has been allocated.

Next deadline: 20 Jan 2027

How to apply

Before applying to this fund, you must complete:

• an Organisational Health Checker and return it to the Museum Futures Team.
• an expression of interest form and return it to the Museum Futures Team.
• the Fair Work First Employer Declaration and return it to the Grants Team.

Once the above steps have been completed, you can apply online via the Museums Galleries Scotland website.

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Exclusions

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Activites funded: Arts and culture Heritage and building preservation Organisational development and capacity building

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Last reviewed about 1 month ago