Welcome to your March Newsletter

This month, you can apply for one of our Small Open Grants to power change at your museum! Apply for up to £10,000 from Wednesday 4 March. 

Talking of grants, in this newsletter we're shining a spotlight on Aerospace Bristol, and how they used their VE & VJ 80 grant last year. In January this year, they held a celebration event for feedback and reflection. 

You can also read about some of our highlights from the latest tranche of Growing Together peer networks on our blog. In addition, we have your usual sector news and sector grants round up. 

An essential strand of our Growing Together project has been the peer networking sessions, led by our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Champions. Our Champions have been on their own learning journeys before designing these peer networking sessions. This lateral sharing of knowledge and experience has been an alternative to traditional learning and has bought together museums from across the South West Area.

Together, over the course of the last six months, we’ve explored a wide range of topics — often challenging or sensitive, but essential to address. These conversations have helped us share resources, support one another and find meaningful ways to move forward in our efforts to become more relevant and responsive to the communities we serve.

We've put together a highlights blog, reflecting on just a few of the things we learnt and experienced during some of the peer networking sessions!

Our Small Open Grants will open for applications at 12 noon on Wednesday 4 March. Applications close at 12 noon on Wednesday 15 April.

Your museum can apply for up to £10,000 (minimum £1,000) for activity relating to organisational resilience, collections development, inclusivity and accessibility and environmental responsibility.

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.

We do recommend that you talk through your idea with either one of our specialist officers or your local Museum Development Officer before submitting.

If you're looking for inspiration, read our latest blog which reflects on some of the successes from last year's grant stream.

In this bumper month for Accreditation success, please join us in congratulating the following museums for achieving Accreditation:

Aerospace Bristol was one of five museums supported with a grant from DCMS to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE & VJ Day 2025. Aerospace Bristol used the funding to carry out a project relating to WW2 in Filton and the surrounding communities.

Laura Dudley, Trusts and Grants Fundraising Manager explains, “Having launched our Filton Blitz Experience for VE day 2025, we saw this as an exciting opportunity to share more stories, working with a Community Curator to build relationships with individuals and organisations in the local community, and to document their experiences of WW2”.

The aim of the project was to enrich the museum’s WW2 offer; feeding directly into an expanded exhibition sharing the stories of real people, and strengthening the museums' learning provision by developing a new school session in collaboration with a local school. Overall, the project has helped connect present-day communities with the history of their local area, uncovered new stories that will enhance the displays, and positioned the museum as a more welcoming and responsive community hub.

Earlier this year, participants and support organisations joined Aerospace Bristol to celebrate their contribution to this project, and share project outcomes for feedback and reflection.

This project has been made possible with funding by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and awarded by Museum Development South West with thanks to support from Arts Council England.

Kids in Museums Family Friendly Museum Award

The UK’s biggest family focused museum award returns for 2026! The Family Friendly Museum Award is free to enter and just being shortlisted can have a significant impact on your museum - including boosted visitor numbers, a raised profile and increased staff morale.

It is the only museum award in the UK to be judged by families and there’s an award category to suit every museum:

• Best Small Museum: Up to 100k visits
• Best Medium Museum: 100k-400k visits
• Best Large Museum: 400k+ visits
• Best Accessible Museum: Our dedicated accessibility category for museums of any size.
• Best Museum Careers Initiative: Celebrating the museums, galleries and heritage sites giving young people valuable careers experience in the museum and heritage sector. 

The deadline for applications is Monday 27 April.

Care-ful Museums Symposium

How do museums demonstrate care – for volunteers, staff, visitors and the communities they engage with? Join museum and health professionals, creative health practitioners and those working at the intersection between health and creativity for a symposium at Holburne, Bath, on Thursday 30 April. 

This symposium accompanies Holburne's exhibition 'The Shape of Care: Making Care Visible' in which their Pathways to Wellbeing community has explored what care looks like. 

If you would like to come but face financial or physical barriers to attending, Holburne are offering bursaries to cover ticket price, travel, support with physical access needs or caring costs.

Art for Engagement Toolkit for Museums

Iggy for All is an Arts Council England funded programme by Emerald Ant which ran throughout 2024- 25, linking six SEND schools and 14 museums in Dorset and Somerset.

Off of the back of the project Emerald Ant have created an Art for Engagement toolkit, which aims to help small (and large) museums plan arts workshops for schools and families around their collections.

Written by Emerald Ant's Creative Director, Sarah Butterworth, it draws on over 30 years’ experience of delivering school workshops. It has sections on planning and delivering workshops, hosting outdoor theatre, an ‘Ideas Factory’ of activities you can do inspired by your museum collections, and a section on working with SEND children.

Health and Wellbeing in Museums Fund

The Museums Association, funded by the Julia Rausing Trust, is providing a programme of grant-making, networking and learning dissemination for health and wellbeing programmes in museums. 10 grants are available of £50,000 to £75,000. 

The Health and Wellbeing in Museums Fund is now open for applications with a deadline for enquiries of 20 May 2026. Around 30 organisations will be invited to apply from the enquiries received.

The Wolfson Foundation

The foundation provide funding for museums and galleries to improve the display and interpretation of nationally significant collections for the public. They generally award grants towards refurbishing or creating new galleries and, occasionally to education and learning spaces.

The minimum grant amount that can be applied for is £15,000 and funding decisions are made in June and December annually. Projects must not be completed before a funding decision is made. 

The best ways to get in touch are via the form on our website or emailing museum.development@bristol.gov.uk

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Photo credits (in order as they appear):

• Trowbridge Museum
• Museum Development South West (MDSW) 
• MDSW/ Aerospace Bristol
• Canva

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