The Museums Association is pleased to announce that nine new grants have been awarded from the Health and Wellbeing in Museums Fund.

Funded by the Julia Rausing Trust, these awards 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. The grantees will join a network for learning and knowledge exchange with other recipients and contribute to the dissemination of learning and evaluation from the MA.

The 2026 grantees are:

  • Bradford Museums & Galleries: £60,894 to build upon and embed a community-led creative health model to tackle stigma and inequalities in Black and Asian brain health.
  • Cornwall Council Museum Development: £73,890 for ‘Caring for Culture, Culture for Care’ which will scale initiatives across Cornwall to support care-experienced young people.
  • Gwella (Flintshire County Museum Service): £73,920 to continue and evolve ‘Bryn y Beili / Bailey Hill Men’s Shed’, reducing loneliness and social isolation through traditional Welsh crafting, intergenerational activity and outdoor heritage engagement.
  • Manchester City Galleries: £73,450 to embed and extend ‘Platt Hall: Creative Health’, a creative health coaching programme delivered with NHS and early years partners to address health inequalities.
  • Manchester Museum: £74,222 for ‘Belonging without barriers’ which will embed a whole-museum approach to SEND health and wellbeing provision.
  • National Museums NI: £75,000 to expand and broaden the reach of ‘Growing Wellbeing at the Ulster Folk Museum’, using volunteering, food growing and environmental activity to tackle isolation and increase wellbeing and nature connectivity.
  • Norfolk Museums Service: £70,773 to expand ‘Community Culture Club’, a programme for older adults living with dementia, and adapt it for other underrepresented groups including older men, LGBTQ+ people and people affected by cancer.
  • North East Museums: £75,000 to develop ‘Creative Pathways Programme’, a multi-site creative health initiative to support adults experiencing health inequalities, strengthen referral pathways, and embed museums within local health and wellbeing systems.
  • Scottish Maritime Museum: £58,915 for ‘ChARTing Connections’, an arts-based programme of activities to support people affected by substance use, poor mental health, social isolation and family adversity, in conjunction with North Ayrshire Alcohol and Drug Partnership.

“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

Process and panel

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.

One of the fund’s essential criteria for applications is for work to “fit within a strategic commitment to future health and wellbeing work”, and this has shaped the types of applications that have been successful. Several of the grants awarded are to groups of museums in one place, or to museums working with other venues in the place where they operate.

We have also awarded three grants to museums in Manchester over the two years of the fund because of their outstanding fit for the aims and criteria of the fund. In our programme-level evaluation we will explore how this links to public policy on place and may reflect the importance of local and regional governing body support for health and wellbeing work.

In 2026, a total of 30 applications were invited following conversations with 65 museums. The grantees were decided by a panel comprising:

  • Georgina Young, chairperson and MA board member
  • Anne Dodwell, representing the Julia Rausing Trust
  • Sally Colvin, representing the Museums Association
  • Lynn Podmore, an independent museum health and wellbeing representative
  • Amisha Karia, an independent museum health and wellbeing representative

Meet the 2025 grantees

The first round of grants was awarded in September 2025, with nine museums given funding to develop and continue their programmes. 

“At a time of real financial pressure across the sector, we are hugely grateful to the Julia Rausing Trust for its support, which means more museums can work with their communities to deliver better health outcomes.  These brilliant projects showcase the power of UK museums in enhancing people’s health and wellbeing, through inclusive, participatory and sustainable work with local partners and communities, proving just how vital museums are within wider health and social care ecosystems.”

Sharon Heal, Director, Museums Association

Main image: Programme participants at Norfolk Museums Service