Watch the film below to find out why community engagement, asking for advice and keeping in touch with us are vital to the success of your project.

Alexandra Palace is an example of the type of large, ambitious and exciting projects we're keen to receive Expressions of Interest from for our new £5million+ Heritage Horizon Awards.

They used National Lottery funds, plus another £6.8m from Haringey Council and £1m from their own fundraising, to bring the theatre – which had been derelict for 80 years – back into use, and rejuvenate the East Court of the Palace.

Top tips

Stewart offered three key pieces of advice to potential Heritage Horizon Award applicants:

1. "One of the things that I think would enable people to be more successful in their project is to engage the community and not underestimate the amount of communication budget you might need in order to engage them all the way through the project. We did struggle to keep people engaged and get the messages out... We were so busy delivering the project."
2. "I think what we did really well was we weren't afraid to ask others for help and seek out other people that may have been through [issues] before, and just have coffee with them, and go and look at other projects."
3. "Keep close to the funder, and explain to them what early warning signs you're seeing, and what your route to mitigate might be. The relationship that we've had with the Heritage Fund team has been strengthened because of that, because we've been open and honest and we've been able to engage their expertise and guidance at an early stage, so there were no surprises."

How to apply

We are currently inviting Expressions of Interest from organisations with ambitious ideas. The deadline is 11 October 2019.

Find out more on our Heritage Horizon Awards page.