Art Fund awards £1.3m in final round of Reimagine programme

Art Fund has awarded £1.3, to 29 museums and galleries across the UK in the final round of its Reimagine funding programme.

The  £1.2m is shared between the 29 organisations, with a further £100,000 distributed through Museum Development England, Northern Ireland Museums Council and Museums Galleries Scotland as microgrants for smaller institutions.

Launched in 2020 in response to the pandemic, Reimagine was developed to address urgent challenges facing UK museums.

Art Fund said this final round has focused on collections work, which it said was as an area with high demand for funding. The charity’s Museum Directors Survey in 2024 found that 56% of museums cite lack of funding for collections as a major barrier to essential work including digitisation, collections reviews and acquisitions.

Projects receiving support of up to £50,000 include Horniman Museum and Gardens, which has been awarded £49,992 for a community-led stewardship model for ancestral remains that embeds culturally specific care and documentation protocols. The Science Museum Group received £50,000 to convene museums across the UK to develop solutions for preserving digital heritage.

Spalding Gentlemen’s Society has been awarded £45,880 for the first major redisplay of Britain’s second-oldest museum in over a century. Cragside, managed by the National Trust, received £50,000 to create an immersive experience recreating early electric light in the property’s library.

Other funded projects include the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, which received £46,021 to advance understanding of over 2,000 Pacific arrows through research and scientific analysis, and the Museum of the Order of St John, which was awarded £48,307 to transform the care and interpretation of its uniform collection ahead of St John Ambulance’s 150th anniversary.

Jenny Waldman, Director of Art Fund, said the final round of Reimagine funding will “ensure that works of art, objects and their stories are shared and preserved for future generations.”

Gordon Seabright, Chief Executive of the Horniman Museum and Gardens, said: “It seems fitting that one of the legacies of this final year of Reimagine is supporting work that places communities at the heart of how museums care for ancestral remains. This funding enables the next phase of our work – putting our revised human remains policy into community-led practice, and creating a model of shared stewardship we hope will be adopted by other museums.”

Over five years, the Reimagine funding programme has supported more than 245 museums and galleries.

Art Fund is now consulting with the sector to shape future programmes, including the Museum Directors Survey in early 2026. This last Reimagine round has been received support from The Kirby Laing Foundation, Art Fund members and supporters of Art Fund’s Expanding Horizons appeal.