Health and Wellbeing in Museums Fund

The Museums Association, funded by the Julia Rausing Trust, is providing a programme of grant-making, networking and learning dissemination for health and wellbeing programmes in museums. Grants will enable the development and continuation of groundbreaking health and wellbeing programmes in UK museums during a time of financial crisis and increasing demand for services.

Meet the 2026 grantees

Following the first round of grantees in 2025, nine more museums have been given funding to develop and continue their programmes. 

• Find out more about the 2026 grantees
• Reflections and lessons learned from round one (pdf)

Over the two years of the Health and Wellbeing in Museums Fund we have awarded 18 grants totalling £1.29m. These grants have gone to museums in all four nations of the UK; to local authority, independent, university and national museums of different sizes; and to museum partnerships, groups and individual sites. A diverse range of participants will take part in funded work that relates to causes including health inequality, SEND, substance abuse, maternal mental health, rural isolation, bereavement and more.

Our approach to creating a balanced cohort of funded projects has been to offer consultation, coaching and application support to provide equity of access to the fund. The selection panel applied the published criteria for the fund to assess and differentiate applications, having to make some difficult decisions in a thorough and competitive funding scenario.

“The Julia Rausing Trust has been proud to work in partnership with the Museums Association to deliver a targeted programme that is helping to scale up health and wellbeing approaches across the museum sector. The quality of applications received in both funding rounds was exceptionally high and being shortlisted was an achievement in itself. We look forward to seeing the successful organisations share their approaches with the sector, helping to build knowledge and further establish museums as a key pillar of local health and wellbeing.”

Anne Dodwell, Director – Arts & Heritage, Julia Rausing Trust

Lead image: Euan Baker courtesy of the Amelia Scott, one of the grantees of the fund’s first round