New Impact Acceleration Account Grants

Partnership grants fund MOLA staff members in collaboration with external partners – specifically other archaeological units, curators, consultants, clients, or underfunded charitable organisations or SMEs – to co-design and test new methods that increase the positive social and environmental impact of archaeological fieldwork and post-excavation research.  

The grant allows you and your partners to bid for up to a total of £20k. This is designed to cover the costs of MOLA staff and partner time, as well as other allowable expenses. The funding must be spent within a maximum period of nine months.  

Examples of projects include, but are not limited to:   

• Teaming up with a climate action or environmental charity to design low-carbon alternatives to standard archaeological field, lab, office, or other practices. 

• Partnering with another archaeological unit to pool data and expertise from across a region to develop a new experience or product for non-specialist audiences. 

• Collaborating with a curator or consultant to rethink approaches to designing archaeological programmes to achieve greater social impact for local communities. 

• Working with a charity or small enterprise to develop greater opportunities for, and decrease barriers around, the employment of individuals who are currently underrepresented in archaeology. 

• Cooperating with an arts or cultural organisation to develop new ways of engaging citizens in real-time with live excavation or post-excavation activities. 

• Partnering with a media-oriented charity or small-to-medium-sized media company to design and test a novel and wide-reaching approach to public broadcasting of archaeology. 

These grants fund time and resources for MOLA staff and at least one external partner, such as groups of archaeology and heritage specialists; college and secondary school students; or other relevant partners. Policy-making stakeholders and beneficiaries could include parliamentary officials, non-departmental public bodies, government departments, regulatory bodies, think tanks or political parties.  

Policy-shaping grants may be used to influence UK processes, practices, and policies around the management, access, and long-term use of the historic environment. They could also advance organisational policy change in key sectoral bodies regulating or accrediting archaeological practice.   

Examples of policy-shaping activities include, but are not limited to:  

• Teaming up with a youth group to host a town hall meeting around guaranteeing long-term access to archaeological finds excavated from their local area  

• Collaborating with other archaeological units to author and promote a briefing paper on social value based archaeology case studies for the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group  

• Partnering with local college students and local media to produce policy-focused op-eds around protecting diverse histories in the neighbourhood  

• Co-authoring a position piece/white paper on the role the historic environment might have on placemaking   

• Working with a local authority to test different archaeological methods to improve advisory decision-making   

• Working with a professional or advocacy archaeological organisation to build consensus and influence guidance on how to approach inclusion and diversity within development-led archaeology. 

Business development grants offer seed funding of up to £15,000 per project for creative practitioners, small/medium-sized enterprises, and our staff. This funding should be used to collaborate in developing educational or playful products and other evidence-informed, revenue-generating business plans based on archaeological and heritage research.  

The grants enable teams of MOLA staff and external non-academic partners to progress their product ideas from the conceptual stage to the planning/design stage. This process will allow all participants to learn from each other and share their creative, business, and research expertise. 

Calls open by 3 July 2024 

Deadline for submission - 17.00 GMT, 5 August 2024 

Panel decisions communicated by 16 August 2024.  

Deadline for submission - 17.00 GMT, 9 September 2024 

Panel meeting and presentations - date to be confirmed 

Projects will start from November 2024 

Awards must finish within 9 months of the project start date