Heritage Stewardship Fund opens for applications

A key element of the Heritage Council’s Strategic Plan 2023-2028 is to foster a stronger heritage sector through the continued support and development of bodies who provide vital heritage services to communities and professions and who have responsibilities for the care of heritage objects. This funding scheme introduced in 2022 has been developed to meet this objective. We are aware that there are staff in state agencies and in educational institutions with responsibilities for heritage programmes, for example, stewardship of and access to collections, archives, buildings, monuments, and habitats. This fund is intended to support staff in such organisations who have not always had access to Heritage Council or indeed wider funding.

The objective of the Heritage Stewardship Fund is to support and build the capacity of staff who play a key role in the heritage infrastructure of Ireland and are vital to the delivery of national policy and plans. Such staff may be operating in organisations whose core remit may not be fully focused on heritage, but which may have an impact on heritage, or which may possess significant collections of portable objects, archives or buildings and habitats.

This scheme is open to employees who play a key role in the heritage infrastructure in public sector bodies of the state, such as:

• Local Authorities
• State Agencies
• Educational Institutions

Local authority-based museum curators, archivists, archaeologists, architectural and conservation officers. This scheme is also open to employees of state agencies and educational institutions proposing heritage-focused projects, i.e., public sector bodies of the state that have a statutory obligation to perform specific tasks on behalf of the government.

Please note the scheme is not open to Local Authority Heritage Officers or Biodiversity Officers as funding is allocated through the County Heritage Plan and Biodiversity Plan funding schemes respectively.

The minimum amount available is €5,000 up to a maximum of €30,000. Average offers are envisioned to be in the €20,000 -€30,000 range with about 20 projects supported by this scheme. Applicants are required to provide a financial contribution of 10%. This scheme does not cover staff payroll costs or administrative overheads.

Online applications must be received by Wednesday 15 January 2025 at 5pm.

Register here for the zoom information webinar on the scheme on 5 December 2024 at 2.30pm.