Digitisation Grants are offered annually to organisations to support the digitisation of material concerned with British art or architectural history and make it open access to users online.
The grant is an award of up to £5,000.
The Paul Mellon Centre (PMC) is an educational charity that champions new ways of understanding British art history and culture. Through all areas of our work, including our Grants & Fellowships programme, we promote activities that enhance and expand knowledge of British art and architecture. As an organisation, we pledge ourselves to ensuring that the histories of British art are enriched and made more relevant to a broader range of people in the future. The inclusion of voices, narratives and experiences that have been marginalised or excluded in the past will have a transformational impact on the future of the Centre and upon British art studies. Accordingly, PMC particularly welcomes applications from those who are under-represented within the academic field of the humanities in the UK.
The next round of Digitisation Grants will open for applications on Monday 4 August and close Tuesday 30 September.
Digitisation Grants are specifically designed to help organisations make materials from their collections freely available for users online via digital methods. The grant may be used towards the practical costs of in-house digitisation (e.g. equipment and software), hiring an external digitisation service and personnel costs for cataloguing or research purposes.
Materials to be digitised could include:
- photographic collections
- archival collections of letters, index cards, notes etc.
- bound volumes (e.g. diaries, magazines, newspapers, albums, sketchbooks, published books etc.)
- objects, paintings or assets
- publications
This grant is not designed to support large-scale digitisation or online cataloguing projects; please see our Digital Project Grant if your project exceeds the scope of this award.
Please note that organisations can only apply for this award to digitise items in their own collections.
Digitisation Grants are offered up to a maximum of £5,000.
An organisation may apply for a Digitisation Grant to put towards practical costs of in-house digitisation (e.g. equipment and software), hiring an external digitisation service (a list of recommended companies is available on request) and personnel costs for cataloguing or research purposes.
The award will be paid to the organisation as a lump sum only.
Our funding programme supports research, educational activities and the dissemination of knowledge in the fields of British art and architectural history, from the medieval period to the present day and across the spectrum of relevant geographical and cultural contexts. Our remit is broadly defined and adapts as the interests of those working in our field change. It encompasses art made in Britain or by British artists, but is not solely limited to art made, or artists from, within the geographical boundaries of the British Isles. Rather we understand the field of British art studies to encompass a broad range of subjects and topics related to the artistic and cultural histories of Britain, past and present.
We do not offer grants and fellowships in field archaeology, the current practice of architecture or the performing arts. Applications in the fields of photography, performance, film and digital media will need to demonstrate their relevance to British art studies.
Applications are open to international as well as UK organisations.
For further questions on eligibility please contact the Grants & Fellowships Manager at [email protected].
The next round of Digitisation Grants will open for applications on Monday 4 August and close Tuesday 30 September.
To apply for this grant applicants must use our online system at grants.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk. Once registered you will be able to fill out the online application form (an example of which can be downloaded below). Once the application has been submitted we will check it to ensure eligibility. All accepted applications will then be read and assessed by our Advisory Council which is made up of twelve external academics and professionals with relevant expertise (you can find a list of the current members here). Three senior members of Paul Mellon Centre staff also sit on our Advisory Council.
References are not required for this award.
The number of good applications is likely to exceed the funding available, so the Advisory Council are advised to use some or all of the following criteria to help them in making decisions on how best to allocate funding:
- academic rigour
- originality and distinctness in the context of current scholarship
- contribution to scholarship in the longer term
- timeliness, where a project is connected with a particular moment or opportunity
- where a grant would support work in a geographical or cultural context which has not hitherto been supported by PMC
- need, where the research would be unlikely to go ahead without this support
- impact and inclusion, where the research would include voices or reach a broader range of people than have hitherto been represented in the field of British art studies
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We also advise applicants to read our FAQ & Guidance webpage before starting their application, our Grant Making Policy and Due Diligence Policy can also be found there.
Decisions made by the Advisory Council will be communicated to all applicants within two months of the application submission closing date. Given the volume of applications, we cannot guarantee individual feedback if you are unsuccessful. However, we do try to accommodate specific requests. Please email our Grants and Fellowships Manager to request this.
If you have any access requirements or experience any issues using our online grants system (or accessing and filling out the application forms) then please do contact the Grants and Fellowships Manager who will be able to assist you.
- The organisation must provide a final report and link to the digitised asset once the project has concluded. Public access to digital reproductions produced through this grant funding must be provided without charge.
- Whenever feasible, it is expected that the digital reproductions will be released with licenses that allow for their reuse. These permissions should be clearly denoted through a Creative Commons license or a Rights Statement.
- The full terms and conditions of grant awards can be read here.
Accessible Formats: There is a large text (size 20) format of this opportunity remit and application form available to download at the bottom of this page. We can also provide large or clear text formats in other sizes upon request. If you have any other access requirements regarding our website or experience any issues using our online grants system then please contact the Grants & Fellowships Manager.
Access Funding: We are committed to making our opportunities accessible to everyone. To support this, we have set aside funding to help individuals who may face additional barriers and as such incur extra costs whilst undertaking their research projects. If your application is successful, we will be happy to discuss how this funding can support your additional needs.