micro-funding for archive engagement
£250-500 grants for creative, academic and community-led work
Archives hold stories, knowledge and untapped potential — but access is not always equal.
This independent micro-fund supports individuals and community groups to actively use archives as a foundation for creative and community-facing work.
The fund aims to:
- Encourage the use of archival material as a catalyst for creative output
- Support multi-disciplinary approaches to archival research
- Remove practical and financial barriers to access
- Widen who gets to work with archives and how they work with them
I am particularly interested in projects where archives intersect with art, research, landscape, ecology, design, social history, lived experience or community practice.
applications are welcome from:
- Independent artists and writers
- PhD and postgraduate researchers
- Students in disciplines such as landscape design, horticulture, architecture or history
- Community organisers and grassroots groups
- Neurodivergent collectives and access-led initiatives
- Practitioners working across disciplines
Projects might involve:
- Researching archival collections to inform creative or academic work
- Exploring relationships between archival records and physical or living collections
- Community visits to archives
- Collaborative or cross-sector experiments
- Producing creative responses grounded in archival material
grants of £250-£500 can support:
- Travel and access costs
- Research time
- Creative Production
- Workshops or community activity
- Care or access support
This is a grant not a commission. You retain full creative control and ownership of your work.
The Aim:
To encourage bold, multidisciplinary use of archives and to support creative outputs that bring archival material into new conversations.
If you have an idea that activates archives in a creative, critical or community-rooted way, I would love to hear from you.