The National Archives’ Resilience Grants programme has been designed to support archives to be adaptable, resilient and sustainable, creating lasting solutions that enable them to respond to change, and contribute to communities and the economy.

Archives Resilience projects could include (but are not limited to):

proposals that would lead to increased organisational stability, including long-term organisational, financial and strategic planning
increased staffing capacity and enhanced skills
reduced costs
increased income
improving capacity to develop, care for and enrich collections, physically and digitally
ensuring that collections are safely preserved, including digitally
work on diversity, equity and inclusion
responses to climate change, such as developing energy-efficiency within an archives service.

Each applicant is likely to have different needs and approaches to building organisational resilience. To help organisations tailor their proposals to their own challenges and opportunities, we ask that applicants make use of the Archives and Record Association’s Archives Service Resilience Indicator Tool, which is designed to provide archive services with a quick methodology for assessing resilience, and identifying gaps or areas for development.

You may also wish to investigate Archive Service Accreditation, the UK standard for good practice across archives services. A Resilience Grant and/or the Resilience Indicator Tool could be used as preparatory actions for an Accreditation application, and have been designed using the same standards and frameworks.

You can download the Archives Sector Resilience Indicator and guidance notes from the Archives and Records Association.

To apply for a Resilience Grant, please complete an online application form.

If you have any questions about Resilience Grants, please contact us via email: archivegrants@nationalarchives.gov.uk.