We’re delighted to announce our new grant funding rounds for 2024/25. This year there will be five opportunities to secure funding from Museum Development South West (MDSW), made possible with support from Arts Council England and Art Fund. Over the year our grant schemes range from supporting individuals to develop specific skills, to supporting museums to engage with schools in meaningful ways.

Please note that museums can only hold one MDSW grant (excluding Capacity Builder grants) during the financial year 2024/25, so please consider carefully which grants you would like to apply for and prioritise accordingly. If you have any questions about any of our grant schemes, please contact your local place-based Museum Development Officer. We also recommend discussing any ideas you have with your Museum Development Officer before applying.

Our five rounds are as follows:

Small Open Grants

Opening Thursday 4  April – Closing Monday 13 May

Grants available: £1,000-£10,000

We know that for many museums a small grant can be a powerful catalyst for change and improvement and this fund is designed with exactly this in mind. We’re looking to invest in museums where our funding will make a difference and are particularly keen to support those who have designed their projects after taking part in previous development work with us.

Our Small Open Grants are designed to be flexible so museums can apply under one of four different scheme aims:

  • Organisational resilience
  • Collections development
  • Increasing inclusion and tackling inequality
  • Environmental responsibility

On Display!

Opening Tuesday 7 May

Grants available: £1,000-£3,000

Back by popular demand, On Display! supports museums in conserving and displaying individual objects or small groups of objects specifically to enable them to be displayed and engage audiences in their stories. You may want to treat an object currently in storage, or an item which is new to your museum. It must require a special display mount or conservation work before it can be put on display. As part of the grant, the object or objects must be on display by December 2025 and be supported by either current or new interpretation or activities to engage audiences (not included in the grant funding).

This grant scheme benefits from the support of our Collections Development Officer, Helena Jaeschke, and we strongly encourage any museums interested in applying to contact Helena in advance to discuss their ideas.

Further information about the grant scheme and how to apply will be included in our May newsletter, but in the meantime read about examples of projects funded last year in our recent blog.

Capacity Builder (two rounds)

Opening Tuesday 7 May and early September 2024

Grants available: £400 – £1,500

This funding scheme offers grants to help develop professional skills and build confidence amongst those working in museums. This funding is open to all Accredited (or Working Towards Accreditation) museums in the South West including National Portfolio Organisations but excluding National museums.

These grants can be used to help individuals, teams or groups of museums (collaborations) engage with training and other continuing professional development (CPD) activities. Maybe there is a conference coming up that would be a fantastic networking opportunity for a member of your staff; or perhaps a newly formed volunteer team would really benefit from a visit to another museum exhibition; or maybe you have identified a shared training need with another museum and could bring in a consultant to deliver a group session.

  • Individuals can apply for up to £400
  • Teams from the same museum can apply for up to £1,000
  • Collaborations between museums can apply for up to £1,500

Individuals can be paid staff, volunteers, or trustees. We accept applications from freelance consultants who have a current contract with an eligible museum.

Museums can apply for up to one individual award per Capacity Builder round (up to two per year) and either one team or one collaboration award per year (one in either May or September 2024). Museums may also hold another Museum Development South West grant whilst applying for Capacity Builder grants. Any application for Capacity Building must come from the museum who will be the grant recipient (i.e., we do not pay individuals directly).

Talking Nature

Opening early September 2024 (information available from June 2024)

Grants available: fixed grants of £5,000

Following on from the success of The Wild Escape in 2023, we want to support museums to develop partnerships with local schools, explore the natural world and consider the environmental crisis. This grant scheme is perfectly suited to museums with natural history collections, or any museum with connections to the natural world within their collections. Are there animals in your collection ready to escape and engage imaginations? Or perhaps there are countryside artworks perfect to inspire responses? For further inspiration, take a look at some of the projects developed as part of The Wild Escape.

We encourage museums to co-develop projects with school partners to ensure they are designed to deliver outcomes for both museums and schools. All the information for this grant scheme will be available from June 2024 to allow discussions with schools and teachers ahead of the application window in September 2024. Projects can run until January 2026 to allow for maximum engagement with schools over the academic year.

We are offering museums a fixed grant of £5,000 to put towards projects that support this work. While not essential, we encourage match funding to help make engagement work go further.