MD North Grants

MD North Grants are a major part of the Museum Development North (MD North) programme using our core funding from Arts Council England (ACE). MD North has two grant schemes available to your museum:

• Open Grants
• CPD and Experimentation Grants

These grants are available to the following types of museums:

• Museums in the north of England which are Accredited, hold provisional status, or are formally Working Towards Accreditation
• Museums that are not Accredited, or not formally Working Towards it, can be part of a project involving a partnership of museums, but an Accredited museum must be the lead partner.

The following museums are not eligible to apply for Open Grants:

• National Portfolio Organisations and DCMS sponsored National Museums.

The following museums are not eligible to apply for CPD Bursaries:

• DCMS sponsored National Museums.

Open Grants  

These grants are to support organisational development that helps museums to meet or go beyond the requirements of the Accreditation Standard. For Round Four, MD North has also received additional funding by Gift-in-Aid from the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media & Sport via Arts Council England specifically for disseminating Collections Care and Security Grants.

By organisational development we mean interventions that might:

• build your museum’s capabilities and capacity to achieve your long-term goals
• improve performance of how you plan for and deliver some of your services
• support testing, trialling or changing approaches to the way you work
• enable your workforce to flourish, thrive and have meaning in their work

All projects must also demonstrate how they deliver against the Arts Council England’s Investment Principles:

• Ambition and Quality
• Dynamism
• Environmental Responsibility
• Inclusivity & Relevance

Open Grants Round Four & Collections Care and Security Grants of grants opens on 9 June and closes on 12 September 2025.

The maximum amount an individual museum can apply for is £5,000. Multisite organisations, partnerships and consortiums can apply for £7,500 where the funding will benefit more than one Accredited museum, including those officially Working Towards Accreditation.

All projects funds must be spent and completed with final reports and invoices submitted to MD North by:

• Open Grants Round 4: 29 January 2027
• Collections Care and Security Grants: 28 February 2026

To find out more, and how to apply, click here. 

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Bursary  

Thanks to funding from Arts Council England, MD North can offer CPD bursaries for individuals, organisations and networks in the North of England that represent or work with Accredited museums and museums officially Working Towards Accreditation.

Grants are available up to £500 for individual CPD and £2,000 for organisational wide initiatives.

Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis until 8th December 2025.  Please note the CPD Bursary will close earlier if all funds have been allocated.

The scheme opens on 1 April 2025.  For more information visit here and full guidance notes visit here.

Future Preparedness Grants

The aim of the Future Preparedness Grants scheme is to support museums to be able to conduct and commission the necessary research, reports and surveys to inform action plans for future resilience, build evidence for advocacy, and support future planning and funding applications for capital development to improve the long-term sustainability and environmental resilience of existing museum buildings and collections.

The following museums are eligible to apply for a Future Preparedness Grant:

• Museums in the north of England which are Accredited, hold provisional status, or are formally Working Towards Accreditation.

The following museums are not eligible:

• National Portfolio Organisations and DCMS sponsored National Museums, English Heritage and National Trust sites, and unaccredited museums.

Individual organisations can apply for up to £10,000 for their project with a minimum of 10 grant awards expected. There is one round of funding with £100,000 available in this scheme. We expect most grant applications will be in the region of £5,000 to £10,000.

The Future Preparedness Grant scheme opens for application on 6 October 2025 and closes at 4pm on 6 February 2026. More information about the grants can be found here.

The Future Preparedness Grants are made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we are able to support museums in the north of England to respond to and prepare for climate disruptions through this funding opportunity.