“This funding will be used to protect access to cherished museums and their collections for their local communities, and provide a stable base for museums to build towards a sustainable future.” – Arts Council England
All of us at Keswick Museum are thrilled to announce that we have been awarded a grant from the Museum Renewal Fund for 2025-6.
Today, 8th October 2025, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England announced the 75 museums who will receive support from the Museum Renewal Fund this year. The Fund is an urgent intervention from now until March 2026, targeted at museums owned or directly maintained by local authority funding, or with a governance link to a local authority. It aims to safeguard the vital community engagement and impact enabled by public access to museums like ours.
The programme’s main goals are:
- To increase the financial resilience of civic museums
- Maintain levels of audiences/visitors and protect public access to museum collections.
- Maintain levels of employment in awarded museums
Jane, Keswick Museum Manager, said:
“We are delighted to have been awarded a grant from the Museum Renewal Fund. With increasing maintenance costs and bills, and this year’s glorious summer impacting our visitor numbers, we are having a really challenging time. Our grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England will not only support us financially this year but also allow us to invest in projects making us more resilient for the future.
We are planning and trialling a new immersive experience that allows people to experience the fells whilst inside the museum, increasing accessibility to the landscape of the Lake District National Park and its inspiring views. We will also invest in our infrastructure (e.g. website and till), increase our resilience as a charity and maintain staffing levels.”
Click here to learn more about the Museum Renewal Fund 2025-26.
