Changes to the Publication Grant

Ahead of the opening of the autumn 2024 round of funding opportunities we have made some alterations to simplify and improve our Publication Grants. Our Publication Grants continue to be one of our most heavily subscribed awards, and in 2023 received over ninety applications.

Therefore we have decided to streamline the process; instead of having the single Publication Grant, for which authors and publishers could apply separately or together, from autumn 2024 there will be three distinct grant categories. These will be:

Author Grants (Large)

Awards of up to £6,000 which can only be applied for by authors, editors or individuals working on a long-form piece of written work (e.g. monograph, catalogue etc.). This award is designed to support costs incurred by the author relating to the publication, such as image purchasing and copyright, commissioning of new photography or graphics, marketing/publicity costs and supporting publisher subventions.

Author Grants (Small)

Awards of up to £1,000 which can only be applied for by individuals working on a short-form piece of written work (e.g. article, chapter etc.) for a scholarly journal or edited volume. This award is primarily designed to support costs incurred by the individual for images use associated with their piece of writing (e.g. copyright costs, image purchasing, commissioning of new photography or graphics).

Exhibition Publication Grants

Awards of up to £6,000 which can only be applied for by organisations, institutions or publishers working on a publication associated with an exhibition on British art or architectural history. The publication could be due to be published to coincide with the exhibition or as a direct result of an exhibition. This award is primarily designed to support the practical costs incurred by the organisation, institution or publisher when publishing the work (e.g. printing, binding, image rights, commissioning new photography or images, indexing, copy-editing, production costs, marketing and publicity etc.). If a publisher is interested in applying for a grant for a publication not relating to an exhibition we would encourage them to speak to the author or editor so they can apply for an Author Grant (Large).

Multiple applications across these schemes, for the same publication, will not be accepted.

If an applicant is interested in digitising a publication then we would encourage them to look at our new Digitisation Grant which is due to be introduced in autumn 2024.

Supporting the field of British art history publishing has been an important strand of grantmaking for the Paul Mellon Centre since its inception in 1970. These changes to the structure of the publications grants will not impact on the overall amount awarded to publication annually, and we will endeavour to support as many projects as possible.

Applications will open on 5 August and close 30 September. Please do contact the Grants & Fellowships Manager if you have any questions relating to these changes.