With all the gloomy news of funding cuts, it was good to hear the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) announce it was adding £45m to its budget for next year, taking the total to £250m (see link below).

The HLF has allocated £17m of the £45m to four areas, including the Your Heritage small-grants programme, which will total £21m in 2011-12. Grants range from £3,000 to £50,000, and museums are among the organisations that have used this funding stream.

Your Heritage’s aims relate to learning, conservation and participation. Projects must help people learn about their own, and other people’s, heritage. They must conserve the UK’s heritage for future generations to enjoy and/or help more people take an active part in, and make decisions about, heritage.

As Your Heritage is a rolling programme, there are no deadlines for applications. Organisations receive a decision within 10 weeks of applying.

Recent successful applications show the broad range of projects that get support. They include £36,100 (86% of project) for the Association for Suffolk Museums for a young volunteers project; £50,000 (57%) for Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books, in Newcastle, for the purchase of typescripts for nine Enid Blyton novels; and £50,000 (100%) for the Kiln Museum Trust to create a permanent exhibition at the Rural Life Centre about Tweedsmuir Military Camp, where Poles and their dependents who were displaced by the second world war were housed between 1948 and 1957.

The HLF suggests getting advice before applying for a Your Heritage grant, although there are details online.

www.hlf.org.uk

Increase in proportion of lottery cash boosts HLF, news p4