Contents
1. Overview
The BFI National Lottery Screen Heritage Fund supports ambitious, audience-facing projects that ensure more people can engage with heritage collections that better reflect the diversity of the UK; build a thriving screen heritage sector; unlock the UK’s screen heritage for education and enjoyment; and help enable everyone to experience a greater range of screen culture.
The fund is open to applications from the organisations that lead the preservation of and access to the recognised UK Significant Screen Heritage Collections (see Appendix A).
The Fund will offer:
1. Resilience awards to support leading public screen heritage archives and collection networks in England to build resilience and to strengthen regional leadership for significant screen heritage collections during the challenges of post-pandemic recovery and wider economic uncertainty.
Support from the Fund will strengthen the screen heritage sector and help it adapt and thrive, enhance regional leadership and advocacy, improve the capacity of organisations to develop and care for significant screen heritage collections and ensure they are accessible. We aim to support activity that increases organisational resilience; helps ensure organisations are dynamic and able to respond to challenges and change; to decrease their carbon footprints and improve environmental impact; to take advantage of new opportunities for growth or resource-sharing; and to explore new models and ways of working. All funded activity is intended to increase the sector’s ability to safeguard collections and make them accessible.
Each applicant is likely to have different needs and approaches in building resilience; we are seeking proposals tailored to your specific challenges and opportunities, and which are intended to achieve a demonstrable change.
2. Project awards to support audience-facing activity that helps ensure significant screen heritage collections better represent the UK’s diverse communities; expands audience reach and access with a focus on underserved and underrepresented communities; and/or addresses the shared national challenge focused on collecting contemporary screen works. 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.
We are keen to support projects that work with and engage local communities, that ensure diverse perspectives are represented in collecting and describing collections, that help preserve and make screen heritage collections more accessible and better understood, and which help ensure that the screen heritage collections of the future have no gap in the record of today. Project awards will support organisations to deliver discrete initiatives that are time-limited; have defined benefits for under-served communities and audiences; and have specific outputs. These could include screening or community engagement events; additions or improvements to curatorial/interpretative materials around an identified part of a collection; a co-curation or cataloguing project with under-represented communities that expands the diversity of collections, or a target for number of items accessioned to a collection through work with a specific community. These are examples and we can consider a range of types of project, providing they meet the aims and criteria within these guidelines.
The Fund will, in addition, make accommodation for a single application from the BFI National Archive for a ring-fenced, multi-year project award. This will be required to deliver significant and measurable impact across the Fund’s objectives across the UK (providing outcomes for people and communities in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). Additional processes will be put in place to ensure that the assessment of the BFI National Archive application mitigates against conflicts of interest (see section six below).
2. Delivering against our National Lottery Strategy
Support from the Fund will enable a thriving screen heritage sector, and unlock the UK’s screen heritage for education and enjoyment to ensure everyone can experience a great range of screen culture. Any activity supported by the BFI National Lottery Screen Heritage Fund must deliver against at least two of the following outcomes of the BFI’s National Lottery strategy:
Objective 1: (Mandatory for project awards)
Experiencing screen culture – everyone can experience a great range of screen culture
Objective 1 outcomes:
- People across the UK can access a wider choice of film and the moving image including stories that reflect their lives
- Funding helps to tackle social, economic, and geographic barriers for screen audiences in new and effective ways
- More people can engage with heritage collections that better reflect the diversity of the UK
Objective 3: A skilled and representative workforce – The UK screen sector workforce is skilled and reflects the population
Objective 3 outcomes:
- Workforce retention is improved by building inclusive, flexible and supportive workplaces
- Vital skills for the sector that cannot be delivered by the commercial market are developed
Objective 4: (Mandatory for resilience awards)
Success in a changing landscape – Independents and cultural organisations can adapt and thrive in a changing landscape
Objective 4 outcomes:
- Better support available for small and medium-sized enterprises and independents to develop their businesses
- Screen organisations have significantly reduced their carbon footprint
Key Performance Indicators
The BFI will measure the success of the Fund using the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
UK-wide
- Number of in-person engagements with funded activity (e.g. screenings, community or outreach). Target: 300,000
- Number of online engagements with funded activity. Target: 3 million
Percentage of in person engagements outside of London and outside 10 mile radius of archive base. Target: 70%
Accessibility
- Accessible screenings, events or online engagements (subtitled, audio described, hard of hearing, relaxed screenings – dementia, autism/neuro-diverse/family friendly). Target: 20%
- Percentage of projects available online. Target: 30%
Environment
- 100% of awardees have calculated a carbon footprint using designated tool within a 12 month period
- Year 1 – baseline carbon footprint data is established for 100% of awards
- Year 2+3 – minimum 30% absolute carbon footprint reduction overall for awards against Y1 baseline
Successful applicants will need to ensure they have an effective plan for collecting the above data. The BFI will work with successful applicants to agree a plan for measuring the longer-term impacts of this Fund.
Three principles of our funding
In addition, all National Lottery awards must deliver against our three principles for National Lottery funding:
Equity, diversity and inclusion
We champion everyday inclusion at the BFI. A clearly defined and communicated set of Inclusion Targets gives us, our partners and the wider industry ambitious goals for a more diverse screen sector and representative audiences. The activity of this Fund as a whole will contribute towards achieving the BFI’s Inclusion Targets, which are:
- Disability (including those identifying as D/deaf or neurodiverse and those with a longstanding physical or mental diagnosis) 18%
- Ethnically diverse (London) 40%
- Ethnically diverse (outside London) 30%
- Gender (50-50 balance of male and female identifying within the gender binary) 50%
- LGBTQIA+ (including those identifying outside the gender binary) 10%
- Working class background 39%
We are committed to working with our National Lottery award recipients to meet ambitious targets. These targets will apply to the public beneficiaries of this funding, meaning the audiences who benefit from activity supported by project awards. In recognition of the diversity of different regions and nations, we do not expect every awarded organisation to meet all of the above targets, and ask applicants to set their own goals for these target areas, reflecting the circumstances in their nation or region.
BFI Diversity Standards
All of the activity supported by our funding is informed by the BFI Diversity Standards. You will need to demonstrate how your proposal meaningfully tackles under-representation in relation to disability, gender, race, age, sexual orientation and socio-economic status, while also considering the interactions of these identities and any other barriers to opportunity. If successful, you will need to report, following the conclusion of your activity, evaluating how you have delivered against the aims of the Diversity Standards in practice.
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
The BFI funds activity throughout the UK. This includes national, regional, and local provision 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 tell us how you will embed the principle of environmental sustainability throughout your funded activity. This includes describing what you’re doing to reduce your negative impact (such as reducing carbon emissions or minimising single-use plastic) as well as what you’re doing to increase your positive impact. If you are offered an award the BFI will provide dedicated expertise to support you in addressing this principle.
We encourage knowledge exchange and collaboration across screen archives and with other organisations that leads to carbon reduction, smarter working and shared initiatives that meet environmental sustainability principles.
3. Check if you’re eligible
Your organisation
Your organisation must be a legally constituted organisation centrally managed in the UK:
- Limited Company registered at Companies House
- Community Interest Company registered at Companies House
- Combined or local authority or statutory body
- Charity or trust registered with the Charity Commission (including UK universities and colleges)
To be eligible to apply for project and/or resilience funding, your organisation must:
- Be a non-profit organisation that collects, preserves and/or makes the collections identified as Significant Screen Heritage Collections (see Appendix A) accessible. Applications can be made by lead non-profit delivery partners (shown in bold in Appendix A).
Organisations not meeting all of the above characteristics are not eligible to apply on their own behalf but can work in partnership with an eligible applicant to deliver one or more Projects.
Resilience awards have a specific focus on safeguarding the UK’s screen heritage at a regional or pan-regional level in England only as there are alternative sources of funding available to public film archives based in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Only organisations based in England are eligible to apply. The BFI National Archive will not apply for a Resilience Award.
Project awards are open to eligible applicants across the UK, including the BFI National Archive.
The BFI National Archive
The BFI National Archive is one of the leading archives internationally for screen heritage digital archives work, curatorial expertise, collections management and preservation and conservation. It is the UK’s National Film Archive by Royal Charter and is the designated National Television Archive. The scale of the collections, and related scale of potential engagement outcomes, under the care of the BFI National Archive mean that we expect the application from the BFI National Archive to provide the underpinning activity that realises the Fund’s objectives.
Eligible applicants may make one application for the resilience awards during this funding plan’s three year period, for activity lasting up to three years.
Project awards will be open for applications annually between 2023-26 and eligible applicants may make one application per year. If making several applications, each should be for non-concurrent projects. Projects can be for a duration of between no less than 6 months and no more than 3 years provided all projects are completed by no later than 31 March 2026.
Get in touch with the team if you’re unsure whether your organisation is eligible for this Fund: screenheritagefund@bfi.org.uk
4. What you can use the funding for
Resilience awards
You can apply for a total amount, across three years, of between £60,000 and £330,000.
Your application should be based on a single three-year award running from 1 April 2023 — 31 March 2026. If you are successful funding will be cashflowed in line with your projected expenditure over those three years subject to:
- Satisfactory performance — you being able to continue to deliver your activity in accordance with the contractual terms of the offer of funding and the parameters of these guidelines and provided that you can satisfactorily demonstrate (through submission of routine reporting) that you are able to remain financially viable through to the end of the term
- Receipt and approval by BFI of routine reporting including progress against KPIs and costs to date. This can include proposed modifications to the balance of the budget and activity plans to adapt to learnings and changing circumstances
- The amount of funding that BFI can make available for the second or third year may be impacted by the ongoing availability of National Lottery funds at predicted levels. If we have to reduce funding for any year we will aim to provide sufficient notice and work with you to modify plans accordingly
Applicants are asked to present a resilience proposal designed to meet the needs of their organisation and grow its stability and sustainability in order to safeguard the Significant Screen Heritage Collections and to serve regional audiences and communities.
Resilience awards will be made in accordance with the scale, ambition and reach of each proposal. We expect the majority of resilience awards to be between £60,000 and £150,000 in total. We will only make awards at the upper limit of £330,000 in total for proposals that demonstrate strong ambition, regional leadership, aim to tangibly strengthen partnership working, collaboration and improve audience engagement with collections, show high impact in terms of wider sector benefit and improved organisational resilience and which meet Objective four and at least two of the Objective one outcomes
All applications should demonstrate a strong environmental sustainability plan and/or how their operations can become more environmentally sustainable.
Types of eligible activity for resilience awards include:
- Enhancing regional leadership and advocacy for the screen heritage sector
- Improving organisational and financial resilience
- Exploring potential for more effective delivery and economies of scale
- Improving your capacity to develop, care for and enrich your collections, with reference to the BFI Diversity Standards
- Extending reach into communities, growing your audience and increasing your provision for regional audiences and diverse communities, outside of single project delivery
- Ensuring collections are safely preserved, including working on digital preservation workflows and systems that improve accessibility
- Planning and implementing strategic activity that is focused on equity, diversity and inclusion
- Building collaborations and partnerships that aim to strengthen the sector and promote knowledge transfer. This will be an essential requirement for projects at or near the upper limit of funding
- Achieving or renewing the National Archives’ Archives Accreditation status
- Exploring measures to reduce your carbon footprint and other ecological impacts
- Strategic activity that is focused on equity, diversity and inclusion
Eligible costs include, but are not limited to:
- Business planning
- Staffing and overheads, and consultancy, where they are shown to meet the Fund’s objectives. You’ll need to demonstrate that these costs cannot be covered by other sources of funding
- Creating and implementing audience development strategies
- Outreach and engagement
- Fundraising strategy
- Materials and equipment essential to the resilience activity (not exceeding 8% of the requested amount)
- Training needed to realise the resilience activities and associated travel costs
- Strategic development and planning
- Knowledge retention within your organisation
- Securing long-term access to physical spaces for collections care and/or audience engagement
- Workforce development opportunities beyond entry level
- Plans for addressing the climate and wider ecological impacts of screen heritage collections management
- Formalised methodologies/frameworks for knowledge exchange and sharing across the sector
Project awards
You can apply for an award between £20,000 and £80,000, for projects that have a duration of up to one year. We are happy to discuss applications that may need longer than a year to achieve their objectives; if this applies to your project, please contact us on screenheritagefund@bfi.org.uk before you make an application.
The majority of project awards are expected to range from £20,000 to £50,000. Applications above £50,000 should address at least two Objective One outcomes, and be ambitious, collaborative and forward looking.
The BFI National Archive is itself expected to apply for a UK-wide project which delivers significant and measurable impact across the Fund’s objectives, with a particular focus on addressing barriers to collecting contemporary screen works, enabling connections to be made across the awards made by the Fund, and developing partnerships across the funded cohort and wider in pursuit of the Fund’s objectives, up to a maximum award of £4million over three years.
Types of eligible activity for project awards can include:
- 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
Eligible costs
Eligible costs include, but are not limited to:
- Project development and delivery
- Staff costs and overheads required for direct project delivery. You’ll need to demonstrate that these costs cannot be covered by other sources of funding or cover the day to day running of your organisation; and are required in addition to any resilience award you might apply for
- Access and audience engagement activity
- Marketing and promotion of the project activities
- Collections care, where this is clearly linked to the Fund’s objectives
- Curation and collections development where these support 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, including rights clearance to enable access to digitised material
- Surveying public beneficiaries of the Fund e.g. attendees at screenings or users of online resources funded through your award
Ineligible costs for resilience and project awards
Examples of ineligible costs:
- Costs relating to an extension of ongoing work
- Capital or equipment expenditure that exceeds 8% of the requested amount
- Filmmaking projects and/or workshops, other film production training or development
- Activity that is already specifically supported by another external source of funding
- Costs incurred prior to an offer of funding from BFI
- Projects whose collections focus is on material already commercially available
- Projects on screen heritage that does not have strong British cultural or historic links, or strong cultural or historic links to local communities in the UK. We use British in this context to include the UK’s colonial histories
- Projects where direct income generation is a primary or dominant activity
- Projects which could indirectly fund a commercial body
- Promotional or other activities (e.g. printed brochures, tote bags, merchandise) which do not support an environmental sustainability policy
This list is not exhaustive and we may identify other cost types within your budget that are ineligible for support.
This Fund is not intended to substitute or replace existing funding or income that would otherwise be available, or to fund activity at the same scale that can go ahead without an award. National Lottery funds can only be awarded to applicants who demonstrate need and a clear public benefit from the activity being funded.
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.
Please note, if you are 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.
Partnership funding for resilience and project awards
For your application to be eligible you will need to demonstrate an element of partnership support which can include cash or in-kind support. Partnership contributions are an important demonstration that there is genuine support for your project from your community, stakeholders and other partners and will be taken into account in the assessment of applications.
As a guide, for resilience awards we would expect to see cash and in-kind partnership funding at a minimum of 10% of the total budget and for project awards we would expect to see partnership funding at a minimum of 25%, the majority of which should be cash rather than in kind.
Partnership funding does not have to be secured at the point of application but needs to be secured in advance of payment of any award from the BFI and before the proposed project start date. Other BFI funds cannot be used as partnership funding and UK National Lottery Funding from another distributor should not be the only form of partnership funding. Contributions can be from your own organisation or third parties.
5. How to apply
When you can apply
Resilience awards (single application window covering 2023-26)
Applications are now closed.
Project awards (application windows during 2023-26 to open annually)
First round application window has now closed and will reopen in 2024.
Information you need to provide
The application form will ask you for the following information:
All applicants: your proposal
An overview of your resilience or project activity describing:
- The activity itself – what it comprises and the timeline for the project to be delivered
- The specific challenges or opportunities that you want to address via this activity
- How the proposed activity will address these and the difference you believe you will make
- The audiences, communities or users you will be focusing on with BFI Lottery funding
- Any resources your activity will develop
- Description of partnerships and collaborations, including where relevant whether you have consulted the BFI National Archive
- For applications which include work on collections development, how the collections work will identify and address gaps in representation
- 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/or project will reflect the diversity of cultures, lived experiences and perspectives of your target communities or audiences
- Your response to the BFI Diversity Standards
For resilience applications, you will need to describe:
- Where you are now and where you want to be in three years’ time, and how you intend to get there
- How your proposal will address the BFI National Lottery Funding Plan objectives for this Fund
For project applications, you will need to describe:
- How your proposal will address BFI National Lottery Funding Plan objective one, and any secondary benefits in addressing objectives three and four
All applicants: 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 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
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the activity – the measures by which you will know whether the activity has successfully achieved its aims
- Your ‘deliverables’ – the specific activity you will deliver using the funding. This could include, for example, seven training sessions to benefit 80 staff, or five public engagement events
- Evidence that your organisation can successfully deliver the project
- 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
For resilience applications, and project applications seeking above £50,000: strategy and governance
- Information on the governance structure of your organisation and how this funding will strengthen your organisation and build resilience
- An outline of your organisation’s overall business plan for the full life of the activity being applied for, for example from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2026, to provide context for the activity
All applicants: attachments
You will need to attach the following documents to your application:
- Resilience or Project Budget as applicable using template provided
- KPIs, using template provided
- Your last set of independently certified / audited accounts
- if more than 12 months has passed since the year-end covered in your certified 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)
Download the Project award Budget and KPI targets template
Applicants for resilience funding, and for project funding of more than £50,000, will also need to attach:
- Your most recent organisational 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, covering the full life of the activity being applied for, for example 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2026 accompanied by notes highlighting the assumptions made and key risks (for instance around renewal of funding from other sources)
- Your organisational risk register
- Environmental impact action plan describing how you will identify and mitigate environmental impact
Equality monitoring
You’ll be asked to complete an equality monitoring form when you submit your application. The form asks for demographic information on your staff. This should be completed for your archive, or the core staff running your network organisation; it should not include the staff of any parent organisation that you sit within, but who do not work directly on archive activity. The data that you submit on this form will be confidential and anonymous and not seen by the staff assessing your application. However, we will not be able to put forward your application for assessment until you have completed the equality monitoring form.
6. What happens after you apply?
- You’ll get confirmation we received your application within two working days
- We’ll request any additional information we may need within four weeks of the fund closure date
- You’ll get a decision within 12 weeks of the fund closure date
Once submitted, we will review your application and if necessary, may write to you or request to meet with you to obtain more information about your application. If we need additional information from you, it may take us longer to reach a decision on your application.
How your application is assessed
When assessing your application, we consider:
Strategic aims
- To what extent does the application make a strong contribution to addressing the:
- Aims for the type of funding you are seeking, as articulated in the Overview; and
- BFI National Lottery Funding Plan objectives and outcomes
- How clear are the goals, challenges and opportunities the proposal seeks to address
- How clear is the articulation of 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
- For project applications only: to what extent does the proposal:
- Demonstrate an audience-facing approach
- Have strong potential benefits for local and regional communities and/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
- A likelihood of achieving improvements in relation to environmental sustainability
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
- For project applications:
- To what extent will any audience development outcomes of the project last beyond its delivery period
- For resilience applications:
- To what extent is the proposal likely to result in sustained sector development
- To what extent do the stated outputs appear financially sustainable
- What is the impact of funding on achieving a more diverse and resilient workforce
- What is the impact of funding on achieving a more resilient and sustainable organisation
Finances and resources
- To what extent do applicants show:
- That their organisation is financially secure
- Realistic projections for income / expenditure projections
- That the activity represents good value for money
- Evidence of partnership working as well as partnership funding
- 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 in order to take place
For the application from the BFI National Archive:
- The extent to which the project makes a substantial contribution to achieving the Fund’s aims as articulated in the Overview, with reach across the sector and across the UK
- The extent to which the project shows high ambition and intended impact, wider sector benefit and a high level of partnership working
For all applications: we also consider how you have managed any previous BFI awards and where your activity will take place, as we aim to make awards across the UK.
We may share parts of 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:
- Clearly address the National Lottery Strategy objectives and outcomes
- Are closest to the Fund’s aims as articulated in the Overview
- 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
- For resilience applications: provide a persuasive plan to assure longevity of both collections care and audience access
- For project applications: include clear plans and targets for reaching audiences from underrepresented backgrounds
Assessment
Resilience awards will be assessed by the Screen Heritage Fund team at the BFI with input from other teams as required.
Project awards will be reviewed by an assessment panel that will include the BFI Screen Heritage Fund team and invited experts external to the BFI, with any conflicted panel members recused from discussing those applications. Recommendations from that panel will be submitted to the BFI Lottery Finance Committee for decision. The application from the BFI National Archive will be subject to additional approval from the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport.
Lottery Finance Committee Consideration
Following assessment of each application, funding recommendations will be made to the BFI Lottery Finance Committee. This is the final stage of the funding decision process. 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 will request the bank details of the lead applicant.
We will also request the personal address and date of birth of the CEO or Managing Director of the organisation applying. Please note that 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 submit your application to our decision-making committee until we have received your completed form.
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.
7. Getting a decision
If you’re successful
- You will receive a written offer of funding
- You will need to sign the offer of funding and return it to the BFI within 14 days
Your offer of funding will set out details of how you’ll receive the funding, how to use it and how we expect you to report to us.
If you’re unsuccessful
We may have turned down your application because we determined that the proposal:
- Did not address the National Lottery Strategy objectives and outcomes
- Did not address the Fund’s aims as articulated in the Overview
- Did not demonstrate a strong enough commitment to one or more of the following principles: equity, diversity and inclusion; UK-wide; environmental sustainability
- Was too ambitious for the budget
- Did not demonstrate enough relevant experience
- Was not yet developed enough
- Did not demonstrate sufficient need for National Lottery support and should be financed by other means
- Did not 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.
Feedback on an unsuccessful application
If we had a meeting with you to discuss your application, you can ask for feedback on your application. We’re a small team and unfortunately that means we’re unable to give feedback to other applicants.
We welcome your feedback on the application process and how we might improve it.
8. Conditions of funding
If you are offered an award from us, 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 report on progress, including a narrative report, cost report and KPI reporting on a six monthly basis (at a minimum) and to meet with us to review the progress of your activity
- You will be required to discuss your plans for any activity that develops digital preservation methodology with the BFI National Archive as a pre-condition to the offer of funding in order to ensure cross-sector uniformity of standards are applied
- You will need to adopt safeguarding provisions for protecting children and vulnerable adults where appropriate
- You will be required to work with our designated cultural sustainability partner to assess the environmental impact of your funded activity, including calculating its carbon footprint. For awards made over multiple years, an annual footprint will be required. Further guidance and support will be provided to you once the award period begins
- Awardees delivering activity that involves public-facing content will also have the support of our designated cultural sustainability partner 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
- Awardees whose activity develops resources and/or generates innovations and learning will be required to agree a plan with the BFI for either sharing these resources and/or project findings with the sector to enhance knowledge exchange.
Appendix A: Significant Screen Heritage Collections
This appendix lists the ‘Significant Screen Heritage Collections’, with the organisations in each region and UK nation that are currently the lead non-profit delivery partners for screen heritage across the UK shown in bold. Applications can only be made by these lead non-profit delivery partners, identified in bold.
Other significant collections listed below are expected to work through the nominated lead delivery partner for their region.
Background
In 2008 a survey of moving image collections held in the English Regions was undertaken through the regional screen agencies as part of the Screen Heritage UK strategy. Its purpose was to create a consistent England-wide map providing up to date information enabling the sector to plan for future delivery. The survey aimed to establish a clear and consistent body of evidence to enable the sector to articulate the value of collections; to assist in making sound judgments about resource allocation; to ensure the safety of significant regional collections and to increase access. The survey was advertised widely and openly and included an online survey response form. There was a high level of response across the regions. In London for example a total of 77 online responses were received.
The survey was undertaken as a two stage process covering firstly identification and secondly significance assessment. Under identification each region was tasked to:
- Identify and map the number of film collections in each region, based on a single agreed template of information
- Identify the scale and nature of collections held by organisations, companies, or individuals
- Identify the condition of the collections, the conditions in which they are held, their ownership and whether or not they are, or could be, made publicly accessible
Each region presented the findings of its survey to an expert panel. From this, a working list of significant collections was established.
The following collections were identified as being of regional significance. Those shown in bold are recognised Regional Film Archives for each region, many of which provide a repository for an extensive range of collections of regional significance.
A set of criteria was developed to ensure a consistent approach to assessment of significance. These included: historic; aesthetic; research or technical; and social or spiritual value. In addition, a set of five comparative criteria to evaluate the degree of significance was created, forming modifiers of the main criteria and including: provenance; representativeness; rarity; condition, completeness or intactness and integrity; and interpretive potential.
Lead organisations for the UK’s Significant Screen Heritage Collections are shown in bold:
National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute (BFI)
East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA)
Other significant collections in this region:
- History of Advertising Trust (HAT)
- The Children’s Film Unit
- The Cambridge Centre for South Asian Studies
- Screen East Short and regional back catalogue from First Take, Digital Shorts
- The Children’s Film Unit
London’s Screen Archives
Imperial War Museums (IWM)
Media Archive for Central England (MACE)
Other significant collections in this region:
- The National Tramway Museum
- Rolls Royce
- BBC Collection
- Birmingham Archives and Heritage, Philip Donnellan Collection
- Staffordshire Film Archive
National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales (NSSAW)
North West Film Archive (NWFA)
Other significant collections in this region:
- Workers Film Association (WFA)
North East Film Archive
Other significant collections in this region:
- Amber Films
- Turner’s Collection
- Trade Films
- Tyne and Wear Archive (TWA)
- TH Brown Collection
Northern Ireland Screen Digital Film Archive
Moving Image Archive Scotland/National Library of Scotland (NLS-MIA)
Screen Archive South East (SASE)
Wessex Film and Sound Archive (WFSA)
South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA) now The Box - Plymouth
Other significant collections:
- Trilith
- Dartington
Yorkshire Film Archive (YFA)
Other significant collections in this region:
- One to One Video
- The CH Wood Collection
- Huddersfield Video and Cine Club
- The West Yorkshire Police Imaging Unit