Contents
1. About this fund
£8.11 million has been allocated to the BFI National Lottery Screen Heritage Fund in the BFI’s 2026-2029 National Lottery Funding Plan. Funding will go towards building a thriving screen heritage sector, unlocking the UK’s screen heritage for education and enjoyment, and ensuring that more people can engage with heritage collections that better reflect the diversity of the UK.
The fund will support organisations that hold and operate screen heritage collections, on a not-for-profit basis, to deliver time-limited projects with defined benefits for under-served communities and audiences ensuring that everyone can experience a greater range of screen culture.
All activity supported must meet at least two of the following fund aims, which can also be found in the principles, objectives and outcomes of the BFI National Lottery strategic framework.
Fund aims
- More people, from a wide and diverse range of backgrounds, can engage with screen heritage collections that better reflect the diverse communities of the UK
- Expanded outreach and audience engagement with screen heritage, including co-curation with local communities
- Workforce retention is improved in the screen heritage sector by building inclusive, flexible and supportive workplaces that are representative of our population
- Skills in the screen heritage sector are significantly improved resulting in strengthened capacity and resources for collecting today’s moving image heritage
- Screen heritage collections have significantly reduced their carbon footprint and broader ecological impacts of care for collections.
- Funded projects help to tackle social, economic, and geographic barriers for screen audiences in new and effective ways
- Screen heritage organisations become more resilient with clearly articulated, long-term plans for organisational sustainability and development
- Screen heritage organisations share knowledge and collaborate with each other and with broader cultural partners
- New moving image works are collected (“contemporary collecting”) to ensure that the screen heritage collections of the future have no gap in the record of today
We are seeking proposals that are creative and ambitious and lead the way in addressing the fund’s aims within and across regions and UK nations according to scale.
2. Check if you’re eligible
Eligibility of your organisation
The screen heritage activity may form the sole or a partial activity of your organisation.
Your organisation is eligible if it meets all of the following:
- operates a screen archive, collection network or similar
- has the remit to collect and preserve screen collections and make them accessible to the general public on a not-for profit basis, either as the sole or partial activity of the organisation
- is legally constituted and centrally managed in the UK as one of the following:
- charity or trust registered with the Charity Commission (including UK universities and colleges)
- a limited company registered at Companies House that is not defined as a ‘large’ company under the Companies Act 2006, or more than 50% owned by (or a subsidiary of) one of the following:
- non-UK resident individuals
- a company or corporation owned by non-UK resident individuals
- a company or corporation having shares listed on any stock exchange
- community interest company registered at Companies House
- combined or local authority or statutory body
You are not eligible to apply if:
- your organisation holds a screen heritage collection, but it is distributed or exhibited for profit
- your heritage collection is only in sound, music, paper, or other static form
- you are able to access any devolved or other funding that supports similar activities
- you are applying as an individual or partnership
Eligibility of your project
Types of eligible activity include, but are not limited to:
- expanding audience access to UK screen heritage collections, widening reach and engagement with a clear focus on underserved and underrepresented communities and audience
- developing and implementing plans to address gaps in collections with a clear focus on ensuring collections better represent the diversity of communities across the UK
- working with local communities to identify new collecting opportunities that address some of those gaps
- ensuring that these collections are catalogued, curated and better understood through working with source communities, including during collecting and interpretation of the collections
- ensuring those collections are safely preserved, curated and accessible
- addressing the shared national challenge focused on collecting contemporary screen works including working on digital preservation workflows and systems, and finding solutions for collecting digital materials
- ensuring that learning from the project is made widely accessible and helps the screen heritage sector thrive through a strong commitment to knowledge sharing and information exchange
- working with formal and informal learning partners to improve understanding and enjoyment of screen heritage
- hosting opportunities for professional development, and entry level training in screen heritage
- sabbatical opportunities for staff to undertake work in other screen heritage organisations to gain new skills and improve existing ones
- creating opportunities for engaging with / attendance at national and international training and professional development opportunities including attending conferences, networking meetings, training events
- partnering with an international training provider to deliver professional development activities in the UK
- skills development and training that helps ensure that the screen heritage sector has the workforce it needs to deliver public benefits and engage people across the UK with screen culture
- conducting collections reviews/ audits that enable greater access to, and better advocacy for, screen heritage
You can submit separate applications for multiple projects as we recognise that sometimes elements of activity may need to overlap. However, if the projects are intended to overlap or run concurrently you must be able to demonstrate that you have the capacity to deliver both projects at the same time. This means describing the staffing and other necessary resources you will have in place across the projects.
Types of ineligible activity include, but are not limited to:
- filmmaking projects or workshops, other film production training or development
- projects with collections that focus on material already commercially available
- screen heritage projects that do not have strong UK cultural or historic links (which includes the UK’s colonial histories), or strong cultural or historic links to local communities in the UK
- projects where direct income generation is a primary or dominant purpose of the activity
- projects which could indirectly fund or provide financial profit to a commercial body
Get help with your application
You can email us at screenheritagefund@bfi.org.uk if:
- your circumstances aren’t covered by our guidelines
- you have any questions about access needs
- you need advice and support with your application
- you’d like to give us feedback
If you’re unsure whether your organisation or project is eligible, your circumstances aren’t described by these guidelines, you have questions about access needs or you’d like to give us feedback, contact the team on screenheritagefund@bfi.org.uk.
3. How much you can apply for
Funding will depend on the timeframe, ambition and scale of your project along with the level of public benefit. You can generally only apply for between a minimum of £10,000 and a maximum of £140,000 although if you are applying for a project towards the upper limit, it is expected that you would include a skills-related component.
We can consider making single or multi-year project awards of up to £4m but project awards over £140,000 are rare and applications for higher amounts will only be accepted for projects which demonstrate exceptional cultural ambition, national profile and scale, and which deliver significant and measurable impact against the Fund’s aims.
4. What you can use the funding for
Eligible costs
Eligible costs include, but are not limited to:
- project development and delivery
- staff costs and overheads required for skills, training and direct project delivery
- you’ll need to demonstrate that these costs cannot be covered by other sources of funding including any BFI award, and are not covering the day to day running of your organisation
- access and audience engagement activity
- marketing and promotion of the project activities
- collections care, where this is clearly linked to the fund’s aims
- curation and collections development where it supports delivery of audience-facing projects that expand diversity and reach
- partnership development
- community engagement and co-curation activities
- rights clearance for activities that improve accessibility to collections and where access will be free to the public
- limited digitisation where that work supports project delivery, access or diversifying collections
- evaluation of the project and surveying public beneficiaries of the fund, for example, attendees at screenings or users of online resources funded through your award
Ineligible costs
Ineligible costs include, but are not limited to:
- costs relating to an extension of ongoing work
- capital (building project) expenditure
- equipment expenditure that exceeds 8% of the amount requested from BFI
- activity that is already specifically supported by another external source of funding or by other BFI funding
- costs incurred prior to an offer of funding from BFI
- promotional or other activities (for example, printed brochures, tote bags, merchandise) which do not support environmental sustainability
This list is not exhaustive, and we may tell you that other types of costs within your application cannot be supported by a BFI award or ask that you amend specific activities and associated budget allocations.
If you’re registered for VAT
Your figures should not include VAT that you can claim back. If you are not registered for VAT, or you are registered for VAT but cannot fully recover the VAT you incur on costs, your figures should include irrecoverable VAT. Grants we make are ‘outside the scope’ of VAT and should be listed in your accounts as a grant and not, for example, as a fee for any services supplied to the BFI. You should get financial advice from your own accountant or the relevant tax office.
Cashflow
If you are successful, funding will be cashflowed in-line with spend over your proposed project delivery timeline subject to:
- satisfactory performance – your continued ability to deliver your activity in line with your funding agreement and these guidelines
- receipt and approval by BFI of routine reporting including progress against KPIs and costs to date
- demonstration that you can remain financially viable through to the end of the term
Partnership funding
You do not have to raise additional finance for your project, if you can make it with the amount of funding you are requesting from the BFI. However, partnership contributions (cash or in-kind) are a helpful indication that there is genuine support for your project from your community, stakeholders and other partners.
If you are aiming to raise partnership funding, it does not have to be secured at the point of application. Contributions can be from your own organisation or third parties but not from other BFI National Lottery funds.
BFI National Lottery funding
We can only award funding to projects that have a clear public benefit along with an evidenced need for National Lottery funds.
This Fund is not intended to substitute or replace existing funding or available income, or to fund activity at the same scale that can go ahead without an award.
BFI National Lottery Funding is project-based, time-limited funding, and as such, there should be no expectation of ongoing support beyond the term of any awards made.
5. What your project needs to achieve
Key Performance indicators (KPIs)
The BFI National Lottery Screen Heritage Fund’s success will be measured using the collective outcomes of all of the awarded projects. You should consider how your project’s activity contributes to the Fund’s KPIs below, but we don’t expect awarded projects to individually fulfil them
- successful applicants new to BFI funding: 25%
- number of metadata records of collections updated or created: 500,000
- number of interactions with screen heritage collections, due to the funded project (for example, in person engagement/events, website visits, research requests): 300,000
- number of people engaging with professional development activities: 150
- percentage of awards made outside of London and SE: Target 80%
- percentage of audience-facing events with least one accessibility feature (for example, subtitled, audio described, wheelchair-accessible venue): 100%
- percentage of project outputs, such as reports, case studies, videos, toolkits available online: 10%
- sustainable screen support offered to awardees each year (based on awardee data supplied to BFI): 100%
- awardees calculating a carbon footprint using provided tools: 100%
Equity, diversity and inclusion
All activity supported by our funding should address the BFI Diversity Standards. If successful, you’ll need to evaluate and report on how you’ve delivered against the aims of the Diversity Standards in practice (measured across participants in awardees’ activities).
Funded activity may include a focus on specific communities and demographics or the needs of specific regions and nations. You’ll need to set your own targets based on what you want to achieve, which should be informed by the BFI Inclusion Targets.
Successful applicants will need to ensure they have an effective plan for collecting equality monitoring data. Applicants whose projects create digital outputs should ensure that the outputs are accessible for all, including following best practice for disability access requirements and, where online, are available to view free of charge.
UK-wide
Our funding supports national, regional and local activity to ensure that communities throughout the UK feel the benefit of the screen industries and culture. You’ll need to tell us where your proposed activity will be delivered and how this will support the BFI’s UK-wide principle.
Applicants are encouraged to make use of partnership working to achieve their aims. This may include collaborating pan-regionally, working with the membership network Film Archives UK, with the BFI National Archive, the film exhibition sector, schools and education partners, and with other film archives in their regions and UK wide.
Environmental sustainability
You’ll need to outline how you will apply the principle of environmental sustainability (ES) to the funded activity or your organisation more generally. This could include:
- implementing good environmental practice for the project, for example, travel and events
- embedding sustainability within your organisation more broadly
- exploring environmental themes as part of the work, for example, programming, training or skills development
Due to the range of organisations and activity that we fund, we’re not prescriptive about what you should focus on. For guidance, you can explore resources provided by our designated partner, Julie’s Bicycle, particularly through the Sustainable Screen Hub which outlines good environmental practices.
If funded, you are required to submit environmental impact data and report how you have applied the ES principle. Find guidance on reporting on Julie’s Bicycle website.
We encourage knowledge exchange and collaboration across screen archives and with other organisations that leads to the reduction of carbon emissions and negative impacts on biodiversity, smarter working and shared initiatives that meet environmental sustainability principles.
6. How to apply
The BFI Screen Heritage Fund is open all year round and you can apply at any time. If you prefer, you can send us an expression of interest (EOI) before you complete the full application.
Optional expression of interest (EOI)
You can send an optional expression of interest (EOI) and we’ll give you feedback on your eligibility to apply, based on the information you’ve provided. We will confirm the receipt of EOIs within two working days and aim to review them within 10 working days.
If your EOI indicates that your project is eligible for funding, given the information you have provided, and you wish to proceed, you will then be required to complete a full application.
Full application
We strongly encourage you to apply as soon as you’re ready to provide sufficient lead time to the start of your project. Applications submitted less than 16 weeks before the start of a project are ineligible and will be declined.
Information you need to provide
The application form will ask you for a description of your screen heritage collection and activity to confirm your eligibility for funding along with the following information:
Your proposal
An overview of your project activity describing:
- the activity itself – what it comprises, the timeline, and the resources and infrastructure you have in place to enable successful delivery
- the specific challenges or opportunities that you want to address via your project – how the project will address these and the difference you believe you will make
- the target audience(s) you will be focusing on, or who will benefit from your project
- if you are working with vulnerable people as part of your project, confirmation that you will have safe-guarding policies and practices in place. You should also ensure that wellbeing for project staff, participants and visitors is considered throughout your project.
- any resources your activity will develop, and your plan for sharing those resources with the wider sector
- description of partnerships and collaborations, if applicable, including, where relevant, whether you have consulted the BFI National Archive
- for applications which include work on collections development, audit and appraisals, how the collections work will identify and address gaps in representation
- for applications which include skills and training, how your project will improve entry routes or staff retention or succession planning
- how you are addressing environmental sustainability and ecological impact as part of the activity, identifying the specific actions you will take
- your plans for monitoring and evaluation
- how the proposal supports equity, diversity and inclusion, including how your organisation and project will reflect the diversity of cultures, lived experiences and perspectives of your target communities or audiences
- how your proposal will address the fund aims
If you’re requesting funding for new staff posts
You must run an open recruitment unless you’re moving an existing staff member into a post created by this project or extending the hours of an existing staff member to work on the project.
For applicants seeking BFI funding to create paid work opportunities, including trainee roles where an individual will be tasked with learning and undertaking real work duties, such opportunities must be paid at no less than the National Living Wage (or National Minimum Wage for those aged 16 to 20). We ask that you clearly set out associated wage costs in your programme budget. Please include a copy of the job descriptions for the roles you would like BFI funding to support.
Where self-employed specialists are to be used as part of your project, we would expect you to budget a fee for such specialists that are fair and reasonable, which should be in keeping with recommended industry rates. Where recommended rates don’t exist for the role, we would expect to see a fee rate that equates to no less than the Living Wage as a minimum benchmark. Please tell us in your budget what fee you will make available to cover the cost of the services to be delivered by self-employed specialists in your project.
If you’re creating volunteering opportunities
Where applicants seek to create volunteering opportunities as part of time-limited projects, we require applicants to set out what each volunteering role will entail.
We expect such roles to comply with legitimate volunteering conditions, meaning volunteering opportunities should be unpaid. Here BFI funds can only be used to cover the cost of expenses incurred as part of recognised volunteering duties, paid against receipts. Please tell us in your application what expenses you expect your volunteers to incur. Open fees or financial allowances for volunteers (for example, £30 a day to cover expenses) will not be supported, although we recognise that for budgeting purposes you will need to ringfence an amount to ensure volunteer expenses can be suitably covered where exact costs are not known in advance of your activity starting.
Finance and deliverables
- your total project budget amount, and the amount you are requesting from the BFI
- a description of your partnership funding and its status (if applicable) – this can include sponsorship, grants, and projected income
- a statement as to why the costs applied for cannot be covered from other sources, why National Lottery funding is needed and what difference it will make
- your ‘deliverables’ – the specific activity you will deliver using the funding
- a description of the risks you foresee relating to your activity and how you will mitigate these
- a plan for knowledge exchange with peers in the screen heritage sector
Documents you’ll need to provide
- budget (completed using the template provided)
- if applying for multi editions of the project, your budget should be for the total duration
- during the assessment process, we may ask you to provide a budget for each year
- KPI targets for the duration of the project (completed using the template provided)
- any other document requested
If you’re applying for a multi-year project
If your project spans more than a year, not just crosses over a financial or calendar year end, we’ll ask why you need multi-year support, and you’ll need to provide key milestones and measures of success and the following:
- your last set of independently certified / audited accounts
- if more than 12 months has passed since the year-end covered in your most recently filed statutory accounts, please additionally provide draft accounts for the intervening auditable period as approved by your Board (including both income and expenditure reporting and a balance sheet). If this is not possible for your organisation, please contact screenheritagefund@bfi.org.uk to discuss with the team
- your most recent budget and management accounts for the current financial year as approved by your Board (including both income and expenditure reporting and a balance sheet), as well as any subsequent budget reforecast since board approval was provided
- budget and forecast for your organisation for financial years 2026 to 2029, accompanied by notes highlighting the assumptions made and key risks (for instance around renewal of funding from other sources)
- your organisational risk register
Download the Project award budget and KPI targets template
Equality monitoring
You may be asked to provide equality monitoring data relating to your organisation’s leadership or project staff at the point of application or during your project. The data you submit on this form will be confidential, anonymous, and not seen by the fund staff.
Diversity standards form
Before you can submit your application, you’ll need to complete and submit the Diversity Standards – Screen Heritage form. You’ll need to register an account to do this.
This form will give you a unique diversity standards reference number, which you’ll need to fill in your application form. You’ll need to submit both forms 16 weeks ahead of your start date for your application be eligible.
Application forms received without a completed and submitted diversity standards form will be considered incomplete and therefore ineligible.
Submitting your application
You’ll need to create an account to make your application online. You can save your application and return to it later.
Make sure you complete all of the sections, as incomplete applications are ineligible and will be declined.
Please consult this PDF preview of the application form to see the questions you will be asked in full:
For guidance about how to use our new BFI applicant portal:
7. What happens after you apply?
You’ll get confirmation we’ve received your application, or EOI, within 1 to 2 working days.
We aim to review EOIs within 15 working days. If your EOI indicates that your project may be eligible for funding, given the information you have provided, and you wish to proceed, you will then be required to complete a full application.
We’ll complete an initial review of full applications and request any additional information we need within four weeks.
If your application is ineligible
We’ll let you know that we cannot consider it for funding.
If you’ve made a mistake in your application, and that’s the only reason it’s ineligible, we may get in touch with you so that you can correct it.
If your application is eligible
You’ll be sent:
- an email that your application is in progress
- a unique ID number for your application
How your application is assessed
Applications will be reviewed by an assessment panel that will include the BFI Screen Heritage Fund team and invited experts external to the BFI.
When assessing your application, we consider:
Strategic aims
To what extent does the proposal:
- make a strong contribution to addressing the fund aims
- clearly demonstrate the goals, challenges and opportunities the proposal seeks to address
- clearly articulate the difference the proposal will make
Public and cultural value
To what extent does the proposal:
- demonstrate cultural ambition
- demonstrate partnership, collaboration, and knowledge sharing
- show a strong commitment to improving accessibility and to diversity and inclusion
- demonstrates benefits for the screen heritage sector
- have strong potential benefits for local and regional communities or the wider UK population, especially outside London
Strength and quality of the delivery and management plans
To what extent does the proposal demonstrate:
- that the proposed activity is strategic, robust, and logistically viable
- that applicants and any partners have the relevant skills, time, and expertise to deliver and achieve a successful outcome
- that risks and mitigation plans are in place
- that there are clear plans for monitoring and evaluation
- long-term impact
- what the legacy or outcome of the activity is likely to be, without further support from the BFI National Lottery
- the environmental impact of the activity
- to what extent will outcomes of the project last beyond its delivery period
- how you’ve managed any previous BFI awards, if applicable
Finances and resources
To what extent do applicants show:
- that their organisation is financially secure
- a feasible budget that covers the necessary expenditure
- that the activity represents good value for money
- evidence of partnership working
- clarity as to what BFI National Lottery funding will be used for and why it is needed. We can only support activity that genuinely requires public funding to take place
We may share your application with other BFI teams or external consultants to help us assess it.
How we prioritise applications
We get a lot of applications and cannot support them all. We prioritise proposals that:
- best deliver on the BFI National Lottery Screen Heritage fund aims
- are likely to have the biggest impact on the screen heritage sector
- offer value for money
- try new approaches or have the potential to develop practice that may benefit the wider sector
- include clear plans and targets for reaching audiences from underrepresented backgrounds
- best address the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion, environmental sustainability, and UK-wide
- allocate a greater percentage of Lottery funds in supporting direct activity rather than staffing and overheads
Identity checks
We undertake due diligence assessments of the applications we are recommending to our decision-making committee for funding. As part of this, before submitting an application to the committee, we may request the bank details of the lead applicant.
We may also request the personal address and date of birth of the CEO or Managing Director of the organisation applying. Our request for this information is not an indication or confirmation of funding and you will be informed separately of the funding decision on your application. We will use this data to run an identity check. Please note that this is not a credit check and will not affect the ability of the CEO or Managing Director to receive credit from other organisations. We will be unable to share your application with our decision-making committee until we have received your completed form.
Grant and Lottery Finance Committee Consideration
Following assessment of each application, we will make funding recommendations to the BFI Grant and Lottery Finance Committee. This is the final stage of the funding decision process. All applicants will be informed in writing of the decision on their application. If your application is declined, all supporting materials will be deleted from your submission in line with our record retention policy.
8. Getting a decision
You’ll get a decision no later than 12 weeks after we’ve received your application, unless we need more information from you, then it may take longer.
If you’re unsuccessful
We may have turned down your application because we determined that the proposal did not:
- meet the fund aims, or did not meet them strongly enough
- demonstrate a strong enough commitment to one or more of the following principles: equity, diversity and inclusion; UK-wide; environmental sustainability
- offer value for money or sufficient public benefit
- have adequate budget for the ambition of the project
- have sufficient cultural ambition, national profile and scale in comparison to the amount of funding requested
- demonstrate enough relevant experience
- have adequate development
- demonstrate sufficient need for National Lottery support and should be financed by other means
- meet with the BFI Diversity Standards
We will keep the data and supporting materials you sent to us in line with our records retention policy.
If you’re successful
You’ll get a written offer of funding which you’ll need to sign and return to the BFI within 21 days. The offer will set out details of how you’ll receive the funding, how to use it and how we expect you to report to us.
Read the general conditions of National Lottery funding and the section below on conditions to funding to find out what you will have to do if you are offered an award.
Feedback
We will do our best to offer feedback to all unsuccessful applicants, but as a small team we can’t guarantee it.
We welcome your feedback on the application process and how we might improve it.
9. Conditions of funding
If we offer you funding, in addition to the General Conditions of National Lottery Funding for successful applicants, the following conditions will apply to your award:
- You will be required to complete interim and final reports on your funded project progress (the frequency of which will be determined by the duration of the funded activity), including a narrative report, cost report and KPI reporting and to meet with us to review the progress of your activity if requested
- You will be advised to discuss your plans for any activity that develops digital preservation methodology with the BFI National Archive to ensure cross-sector uniformity of standards are applied
- Where applicable, you will need to adopt safeguarding provisions for protecting children and vulnerable adults
- You will be required to work with Julie’s Bicycle to assess the environmental impact of your funded activity, including calculating its carbon footprint. We will offer you guidance and resources on how to deliver your activity sustainably
- Awardees delivering activity that involves public-facing content will also have the support of Julie’s Bicycle to identify or develop content, where relevant, addressing themes that enable audiences to understand and engage with the climate and ecological crisis
- Digital outputs created and made accessible online using funds awarded should be available within the UK to the public, at no cost to them, for a period of at least ten years
- You will be required to gain BFI approval for any marketing or related materials for your funded activity, in line with branding guidelines that the BFI will provide to you
- You will be required to take part in an evaluation of the fund by the BFI (or its contracted party)
- Where you have included unsecured partnership funding within your budget, you will need to provide updates on securing this finance to the BFI (normally as part of your performance reporting but, where such partnership funding is intrinsic to delivery of the activity, as a pre-condition to the funding agreement). The BFI may elect to withhold or withdraw your award if you are unable to secure the level of partnership funding required to deliver the activity as planned, or require that you submit revised plans and budget showing how the activity could be delivered without the planned partnership funding
- If the project term is for a period of 24 months or longer, we will confirm the amount to be allocated to each 12 months, how it will be cashflowed (likely to be in equal annual amounts) and when performance review points will occur. Prior to each new year we will review:
- achievement of agreed deliverables to date
- any updates to your plan, budget forecast (including income and other partnership funding) and risk register
- your ongoing ability to deliver the agreed activity (including in relation to your continuing financial stability)
- The BFI National Lottery Funding Plan 2026 to 2029 is based on full use of predicted income from National Lottery ticket sales due to BFI. In the event that receipts to BFI are lower than predicted we may have to make a reduction across all funding plan programmes. The amount of funding that we can make available for the later year(s) may therefore be impacted by the ongoing availability of National Lottery funds at predicted levels. If we have to reduce funding for any year, we will ensure that we provide sufficient notice and work with you to modify plans accordingly