Image: © AHRC/Twitter
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has announced its intention to launch the Capability for Collections Fund next month, designed to facilitate a series of targeted interventions to renew and upgrade UK research facilities.
The investment will aim to support a refresh or upgrade of major facilities and the urgent replacement or upgrade of core equipment and instruments at research sites within the nation’s GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) sector.
Critical to the UK heritage sector’s continued success, AHRC claims, is investment in conservation and heritage science facilities, along with ensuring physical spaces which bring practitioners, curators and scientists together are as accessible as possible.
The assessment of applications for the new Fund will focus on the urgency and feasibility of spend within quarters 3 and 4 of 2020/21, with support only being offered to projects that will be completed by 31st March 2021.
AHRC has chosen to release preliminary details now so that organisations under huge pressure have the maximum opportunity to prepare potential applications.
Full details, including the call specification, timescales and scale of the funding, will be released once everything is rubber stamped.