The Heritage Lottery Fund is making a huge contribution to help people enjoy and get more from museums, galleries and other important collections. We fund a wide range of activities led by museums and galleries but all projects must be based around an existing heritage asset. We expect projects to tell us about the importance and heritage significance of their collections and to whom it is important.

We give grants for projects that improve the housing, cataloguing and presentation of museum and gallery collections, and help people learn more from the collections and make them more relevant and accessible to more people. Just as importantly, we make grants to help museums and galleries buy objects or works of art to enhance their collections, provide better storage facilities, and carry out essential conservation work to make sure that future generations can also enjoy them.

We will only fund a new museum or building if it is based on an existing collection and is recognised as important by an appropriate heritage organisation. However we normally target our funding at projects to improve existing collections of strong heritage importance. In addition we can only fund certain types of work if they form part of a wider project that meets our aims and cannot fund them as stand-alone projects. These include visitor facilities such as cafes and toilets.

We believe that the ability to explore and understand the past must go hand in hand with conservation. Our investment in all aspects of the development of museums and galleries has helped them to open up their collections to more people from a wider range of backgrounds.

The good news is that we have already funded over 2,180 projects for museums and collections with grants totalling over £1.37 billion.