Between 2020 and 2024 our investment – including £1m from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – helped:

• support 64 sector support partner organisations and consultants deliver 71 projects
• provide training to over 53,000 individuals working and volunteering in over 6,400 heritage sector organisations
• deliver over 242,000 hours of training and development opportunities
• create over 880 open licenced, accessible English and Welsh online learning resources
• survey 8,232 individuals to understand digital skills and confidence across the UK heritage sector

85% of our Digital Skills for Heritage projects saw increases in digital skills and confidence in their participants. 

Read the evaluation of our Digital Skills for Heritage initiative.

Future support for digital

Digital remains a key priority for the Heritage Fund. It runs through our investment principles and we welcome applications for projects from £10,000–£10million for available, accessible and open digitally focused projects or projects that include digital resource creation.

Find out more about our funding requirements for projects creating digital outputs in our good practice guidance.

Subscribe to our newsletter and tick the ‘digital’ box to hear about relevant funding and event opportunities.

What we funded

Teams from Arts Marketing Association, University of Leeds and The Heritage Alliance researched and consulted with the sector to find organisations' 100 most pressing digital questions. The answers, along with stories and practical how tos, are published on their Digital Heritage Hub.

The Digital Heritage Lab, led by Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy, One Further and the Collections Trust, offered workshops, case studies and other resources on topics including digital marketing, fundraising, social media, accessible websites, eCommerce and audience engagement.

Heritage Digital and Heritage Digital Academy helped organisations use digital within strategic and operations planning. The projects were led by The Heritage Alliance and Charity Digital Trust, in partnership with Media Trust, Naomi Korn Associates and Dot Project.

Culture24, in partnership with Golant Innovation and the Audience Agency, hosted Leading the Sector – a course (2020–2021) and online seminar series (2022) – to help trustees and executives expand their organisations’ digital capabilities. Watch recordings of the seminars on Culture 24's YouTube channel and explore their leadership 'pathway' tool.

Eight networks supported communities of practice to pool resources and expertise around particular heritage areas and open heritage to a wider range of people. 

17 projects created digital volunteering roles across the sector. One of the outputs was Vocal Eyes’ Heritage Access 2022, a report on the accessibility of UK museum and heritage websites and an accompanying benchmark tool for heritage organisations. 

Our two Digital Attitudes and Skills for Heritage (DASH) surveys helped us understand and respond to the needs of the sector. Explore the results:

• 2020: the first UK-wide survey of digital in heritage
• 2021: a growing confidence in digital

Resources

Guides on how to use digital creatively, safely and effectively:

• Introduction to online accessibility
• Working with open licences
• Creating digital resources: GDPR, copyright and using open licences
• Online privacy and security
• Getting started with online learning
• Working safely online with children and young people
• Digitisation project planner, handbook and examples
• Doing digitisation on a budget

Digital leadership briefings:

• Artificial intelligence
• Open licencing

Discover more

Explore stories, blogs, and further information about great digital projects and resources below: