Deadline: 10-May-21
National Library of Australia is seeking applications for its Community Heritage Grants program (CHG) with an aim to identify and support Australian cultural heritage collections which are publicly accessible, locally held and nationally significant.
The grants are provided to assist with the preservation of locally owned, but nationally significant collections of materials that are publicly accessible including artefacts, letters, diaries, maps, photographs, and audio visual material. The grants are also aimed at helping make these collections of materials more publicly accessible.
The program is funded by the Australian Government and managed by the National Library of Australia, with support provided by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications (Office for the Arts); the National Archives of Australia; the National Film and Sound Archive; and the National Museum of Australia.
Priorities
Funding priority will be given to projects that are being carried out in a logical order prioritised as follows:
- Step 1. Significance assessments
- Step 2. Preservation needs assessments
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Step 3. Conservation activities and collection management – resulting from the prioritised recommendations of a preservation needs assessment, such as:
- Rehousing collections in suitable storage
- Conservation activities, including cleaning, conservation treatment or rebinding
- Purchase and installation of environmental control and/or monitoring equipment
- Reformatting of original material for preservation and access purposes and ongoing planning for the collection’s maintenance (includes audiovisual and digitisation projects)
Funding Information
Cash grants of up to $15,000 (including GST) are available for eligible projects in each annual round. Organisations are welcome to contribute their own funding or seek/contribute funding from other grant programs to support activities.
Eligible Projects
There are two categories of eligible projects.
Collection Preservation Projects
- In order to apply for collection preservation projects, collections need to be documented and accessible. Funding is available for Cataloguing and Collection Management Software purchases at any time, although in the early stages organisations may wish to consider using simple cataloguing systems such as spreadsheets, prior to investing in more specialised software.
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All other funding projects are structured in a three step process, where organisations apply for funding in this order:
- Significance Assessment
- Preservation Needs Assessment
- Conservation and Collection Management Activities
Training Projects
- Organisations, including cultural heritage professional associations without collections, may apply for training projects funding at any time.
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Training topics might include, but are not limited to:
- collection care and handling
- cataloguing
- disaster preparedness
- collection management
- assessing significance.
- Organisations are encouraged to work in partnership with other groups to extend the outreach and outcomes of training projects.
- Professional organisations are eligible to apply for training projects. It is not necessary for these organisations to have a collection to apply for funding for training. However, applications should include information about the people and the collections that will benefit from the training.
Eligibility Criteria
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The Community Heritage Grants program is open to not-for-profit, incorporated organisations that:
- owns or manages a collection of nationally significant material, which is;
- accessible to the general public.
- Funded organisations must make their collections accessible for research, by appointment, via online platforms, or on temporary or permanent exhibition.
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Examples of not-for-profit, incorporated organisations which are encouraged to apply are:
- Archives
- Art galleries
- Community groups
- Cultural heritage professional associations
- Historical societies
- Indigenous groups
- Libraries
- Multicultural groups
- Museums
- Religious groups
- An organisation that wishes to apply for funding but which manages, rather than owns, the collection, must provide written permission from the legal owner of the collection with their application.
For more information, visit National Library of Australia .
For more information, visit https://www.nla.gov.au/content/community-heritage-grants-4