Nine museums and museum services across the UK have received a combined £636,064 in the latest round of funding for projects intended to support community health and wellbeing. The awards range from £58,915 to £75,000 and will back work addressing issues including health inequalities, loneliness, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), dementia, substance use and support for care-experienced young people.
The grants are the second and final round of the Health and Wellbeing in Museums Fund, supported by the Julia Rausing Trust and administered by the Museums Association. Across its 2025 and 2026 rounds, the fund awarded 18 grants totalling £1.29 million. This year’s nine awards span museums in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, with projects designed to develop existing activity or establish longer-term approaches rather than provide a single, short-term event.
Projects rooted in local partnerships
Bradford Museums & Galleries received £60,894 to build on a community-led creative health model intended to address stigma and inequalities in Black and Asian brain health. In Manchester, City Galleries was awarded £73,450 to extend its Platt Hall creative health coaching programme, delivered with NHS and early-years partners. Manchester Museum received £74,222 for a whole-museum approach to SEND health and wellbeing provision, including a planned SEND Coordinator role and activity co-developed with SEND audiences, families and partners.
In Cornwall, the council’s museum development service was awarded £73,890 to scale its Caring for Culture, Culture for Care work with care-experienced young people. Gwella, the Flintshire County Museum Service, received £73,920 to continue its Bryn y Beili / Bailey Hill Men’s Shed. Its proposed activities combine traditional Welsh crafting, intergenerational work and outdoor heritage engagement, with the stated aim of reducing loneliness and social isolation.
Other awards support varied ways of connecting museum activity with community needs. National Museums NI received £75,000 to broaden its Growing Wellbeing programme at the Ulster Folk Museum, using volunteering, food growing and environmental activity to address isolation and encourage connection with nature. Norfolk Museums Service was awarded £70,773 to expand its Community Culture Club for older adults living with dementia and adapt the programme for other underrepresented groups, including older men, LGBTQ+ people and people affected by cancer.
North East Museums will use a £75,000 award to develop a multi-site Creative Pathways Programme for adults experiencing health inequalities, with work on referral pathways and the role of museums in local health and wellbeing systems. The Scottish Maritime Museum received £58,915 for ChARTing Connections, an arts-based programme developed with North Ayrshire Alcohol and Drug Partnership for people affected by substance use, poor mental health, social isolation and family adversity.
What the grants are intended to do
The projects differ in audience and delivery, but the fund is focused on work that museums can sustain and develop with communities and local partners. Its published criteria include a strategic commitment to future health and wellbeing work. Several of the successful projects involve more than one organisation or connect museum activity with health, care or community services.
The Museums Association says 30 applications were invited for the 2026 round after conversations with 65 museums. The awards were selected by a panel that included representatives of the association and trust alongside independent museum health and wellbeing specialists. Fund recipients will also take part in a learning network and share evaluation, allowing organisations to compare approaches across different places and communities.
The announcement describes the aims of funded programmes, not demonstrated clinical results. Their value will depend on how activities are delivered, who is able to take part and what evaluation shows over time. The projects nevertheless illustrate a varied role for museums: alongside collections and exhibitions, they can provide settings for creative activity, social connection and partnerships around locally identified needs.
