Ask the Expert Q&A 13 March 2017: HLF Funding for Museums– with Louise Clare
Louise Clare, Development Manager for Heritage Lottery Fund Yorkshire, will be answering your questions on Monday 13 March between 2pm to 3pm GMT.
Louise Clare is the Development Manager for Heritage Lottery Fund Yorkshire.
The Heritage Lottery Fund offer a range of different grant programmes with grants from £3,000 to over £5 million. In assessing applications, we take account of the outcomes for heritage, people and communities that projects will achieve.
Find out more on www.hlf.org.uk
Louise heads up a team of two Development Officers to help to advise on HLF grant programmes.
The team run free pre-application information and advice sessions to help groups apply for our funding. Topics covered include: our main funding programmes; examples of projects funded; our criteria and assessment; project planning; budgeting and other useful tips.
In many ways our main role is to help people explore their passions for heritage.
The Yorkshire’s Back Garden campaign is just one example. Our campaign highlights Yorkshire sand the Humber’s beautiful landscapes and wildlife and helps local people to connect with them.
Find out more by searching Yorkshire’s Back Garden on the HLF website.
Every aspect of the Development Team’s work aims to increase awareness of the contribution made by National Lottery Funding for heritage projects. We work together with grantees to help others with applications and drive understanding of heritage, its value and the difference it makes to people’s lives.
I look forward to answering questions on HLF funding for Museums on Monday 13 March 2pm to 3pm.
Louise Clare, Development Manager for Heritage Lottery Fund Yorkshire will be answering your questions on Monday 13 March between 2pm to 3pm GMT.
You can post questions before the Q&A session, on 13 March, or you can converse in real time with our expert. You can use the comment box below to post a question, or you can use twitter with the hashtag #mdyask.
Comments have to be moderated, to protect the blog from spam, so if your comment doesn’t appear straight away, don’t worry, we’ll get to it as quickly as we can.
If you have a problem submitting questions, either in the comment box, or via twitter, please email your questions to gillian.waters@ymt.org.uk
If you have ideas for subjects you’d like to see us cover in future, or would like to take questions yourself, please get in contact with us and let us know.
Your Comments
Louise Clare |
Good afternoon! We thought we should wett your appetite for comments and questions, recent awards to Museums throughout Yorkshire and the Humber include;
Scarborough Museums Trust (SMT) and Yorkshire Coast Homes (YCH) have received a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Sharing Heritage grant for their innovative Outside the Box project.
Thanks to National Lottery players, this exciting project, which will take place in 10 different locations across Scarborough and Filey, has been given £5,300 to buy iPads to record memories as part of the inter-generational reminiscence project.
Outside the Box was successfully piloted by the two organisations last year in YCH community centres, and will now be rolled out across the area. The free-to-attend sessions will be open to anyone, with the aim of addressing loneliness in older people, increasing opportunities and building communities.
It involves young people from local schools and youth groups working with objects from the Scarborough Collections (the name given to all the museum objects owned by the Borough of Scarborough and in the care of Scarborough Museum Trust) to inspire and record memories from older people in the area.
Unstoppable Lab, Keyhole Creative Media, Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery, Doncaster Archives, Sir Thomas Wharton Community College and Maltby Academy have received substantial funding thanks to National Lottery players to deliver an exciting initiative that will engage local teenagers in a year-long documentary filmmaking project that aims to inspire young people to achieve more of their potential.
The History of Youth Empowerment in Britain is a student-lead heritage project that will take place out of school hours. With funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), teenagers will conduct research into the influential organisations that have empowered young people in our country since the Industrial Revolution.
Barnsley MBC has received a £10,000 Sharing Heritage award for ‘Hear My Voice: This is my Home’, a project focusing on memories and stories from people from Barnsley’s LGBTQ+, disabled and ethnic minority communities. The project aims to give the wider community a better understanding and encourage a sense of empathy and connection to some of those who have been marginalised, or from those who can be some of the most vulnerable people in their communities.
https://www.hlf.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/press-releases/life-culture-and-struggle-equality
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Gillian Waters |
Hi Louise
What would you say are the top tips to a good HLF bid for a project?
Gillian
Louise Clare |
Top Tips!
First all get in touch and tell us about your idea!
You can always phone us for a quick chat, but for most of our grant programmes we have a Project Enquiry Form for you to fill in first. This enables us to get to know your idea and then give you some written feedback on your ideas before working on a full application.
Submit a Project Enquiry Form.
If you use the wealth of information on our website to develop the basics of your project via the form, we can then spend quality time with you afterwards strengthening that idea and sharing tips on what decision-makers are looking for, rather than simply repeating information which is easily found online.
For most of our programmes, the form is not essential but it is strongly recommended. Most applicants find it a good way to get feedback on their initial ideas, meaning your final grant application is stronger and more likely to be funded.
We aim to respond within ten days of receiving your enquiry, but we recommend submitting the form as soon as you can, if you are working to a deadline. That way you will have plenty of time to strengthen your application following our feedback and further discussions with us, before submitting your final grant application.
Take time to think about and respond to feedback on the project enquiry form.
At this early stage we can tell you if your ideas are well matched to HLF, and if you are looking at the most suitable grant programme (we have lots of them, and your project has a better chance of getting funded if it’s in the most appropriate one).
We can also suggest ways your application could be strengthened, by identifying possible partner organisations and other similar projects as well as providing information on budgets and average grant requests.
If you receive what you perceive to be negative feedback you can always apply again- our process is designed to strengthen your application, not scare you off!
We will be honest with our feedback to save you wasting time on an application that we do not think will be successful, but it is ultimately up to you whether you want to take on our feedback, or ask more questions, or simply continue to submit a grant application regardless.
Take advantage of help on offer!
The Development Officer who has given you that feedback will be your main point of contact until you submit your grant application, should you continue to do so. We can talk to you via phone or email and it is often possible to arrange a meeting in order to answer any questions that you have on how everything works, or on your specific project idea.
When you think your application is strong enough, you can then submit your grant application.
So, what are you waiting for? We’re ready when you are!
If you’ve got any questions about submitting a Project Enquiry Form, or anything else related to an HLF application, drop into the Online Community and ask us.
Kate Hims |
Hello Louise
If you haven’t done a project before but are thinking about applying, where would be the best place to start?
Kate
Louise Clare |
Hi Kate,
We always advise groups to talk us and think about what they have, be it a collection a site or an audience or all three!
Put yourself in a funders shoes and ask yourself a series of questions;
• What are you specifically trying to achieve with this project?
• How does this project fit with your overall aims and objectives?
• What do you actually want to do?
• What is the need and demand for your project? How do you know?
• Who do you need to consult about the project and how will you do that?
• Do you have the necessary supporting policies in place?
• Do you have the necessary skills and experience to undertake the project?
Successful projects are based on good research and wide consultation. Spending time on planning will produce a better project in the end.
A good project plan contains
• Aims and objectives
• Description of the project
• Timetable with milestones for what you will achieve by the end of each phase
• Budget, identifying capital costs and activity costs
• Roles and responsibilities for all project staff and volunteers
• Plans for promoting the project
• Plans for measuring your success in achieving your objectives
• Plans for making sure the benefits of the project are maintained after it is completed.
Finally for this step in the project development process ask someone who knows nothing about your idea to read it.
Hope this helps!
Kate Hims |
Many thanks for this Louise, really helpful.
Do you have an example of a project plan as it would be great to see what one looks like.
Kate
Helen Judkins |
Hi Louise,
I represent a small local history group. How do we find out about other projects you have supported so were not reinventing the wheel and are there any other organisations/people that can provide specialist advice?
Louise Clare |
Hi Kate,
We do and although the template is used by applicants for all sizes of grant requests the template can be found in the Our Heritage Grant Programme Guidance document in Appendix One . We also have a link straight to the template on our website, please find the link attached.
https://www.hlf.org.uk/looking-funding/our-grant-programmes/our-heritage
We often host workshops where we focus upon project planning. At these session we often invite grantee ambassadors along. The Silkstone Heritage project helped us with a brilliant session in Barnsley and were very generous with their project planning work.
To find out more about this group and their work please use the link below
https://www.hlf.org.uk/our-projects/silkstone-reflects-church-heritage
Thanks
Louise
Louise Clare |
Hi Helen,
By registering with us at HLF and submitting a project enquiry form you have access to a wide range of information but most importantly contacts. The HLF website has a dedicated projects page including case studies and blogs by grantees.
Our grantees are often generous with their experience and expertise. We involve them in project planning workshops and often enable relationships between groups to enable the sharing of best practice.
David Jordan from the Whinfell Quarry Gardens group explains what he gained from the pre application advice service.
https://www.hlf.org.uk/our-projects/restoration-our-clarence-elliott-cascade
Just one example of how we bring groups together is the Yorkshire’s Back Garden Campaign which has benefited from a series of events and newsletters. Small scale workshops brought together grantees and pre applicants to share best practice and advice.
Museum Development Officers are also an excellent source of advice and information. We work closely with MDOs and find their knowledge of and assistance to the sector is invaluable.
Louise Clare |
Hi Helen,
Rather than inventing the wheel why not find out more about successful projects and find inspiration! We have a few local projects for you to contact below!
https://www.hlf.org.uk/our-projects/365-stories-charting-boundaries-leeds-story-disabled-and-marginalised-people
https://www.hlf.org.uk/our-projects/feeding-nation-celebration-womens-land-army
https://www.hlf.org.uk/our-projects/bradford-film-history-and-heritage-uncovered-and-explained
Thanks
Louise