Open Grants

These grants are to support organisational development that helps museums to meet or go beyond the requirements of the Accreditation Standard.

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 6 opens on 2 November 2026 and closes at 16.00 on 12 March 2027.

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 project funds must be spent and completed with final reports and invoices submitted to MD North by 28 January 2028.

More information will be available later this year.