GB-London: Heritage Funding Ecosystem Research Project

We are conducting research which provides as clear a picture as possible of the current funding trends for the UK's heritage sector. Thirty years after the start of the National Lottery and the creation of the Heritage Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery Heritage Fund) and at a time when established sources of funding - from grant-in-aid to local authority funding to philanthropic trusts - are under pressure, we need to ensure we have a good understanding of how investment flows into and between our heritage organisations and assets and, more importantly, to learn what opportunities and levers we have to maintain, increase and manage this flow in future. Our intention for this research is to take a long-term view of heritage funding with an emphasis on identifying the best ways to ensure future financial sustainability. We want to understand both how current events (such as recent cuts in local authority spending and the Budget) and longer-term trends (such as patterns in philanthropic and individual giving and changes in the visitor economy) are affecting the heritage sector's financial health. We want to understand what sources of funding the heritage sector has traditionally relied on and to what extent these are at risk. But we also want to understand where there are opportunities for drawing on new or under-exploited forms of funding, compatible with sector values.