A new awards scheme worth £1.5m has been launched to help boost education projects at arts and culture organisations across the UK. The initiative, announced by the Freelands Foundation—a philanthropic organisation founded by the media executive Elisabeth Murdoch—will give £100,000 of unrestricted funding to three organisations annually for the next five years.
“The Freelands Foundation seeks to re-affirm the founding principles of galleries and museums as centres for public education,” says a foundation spokesperson. The award judges—the artist Joy Gregory; the broadcaster Gemma Cairney; the curator Jenni Lomax and the art historian Ben Street—will assess entries that “demonstrate a commitment to progressive art education approaches with a demonstrable impact”.
The move comes as culture professionals continue to call for more investment in creative education in UK schools and colleges after years of decline. Last year a new report commissioned by the UK government proposed scrapping the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) qualification which downgraded arts subjects in English schools.
Another report, commissioned by a group of UK arts organisations last spring (Framing the Future: The Political Case for Strengthening the Visual Arts Ecosystem), called on the UK government to establish a £5m grassroots visual arts fund and reverse funding cuts for arts courses in higher education.
“While the last 15 years have seen significant declines in investment and a lack of recognition of the important work that galleries, museums and art organisations undertake in this field, there are still outstanding programmes and projects happening across the country and we are seeking to champion these,” said Henry Ward, the director of the Freelands Foundation, in a statement.
The news comes less than a week after the UK’s arts sector received a much-needed uplift, with the government announcing a £1.5bn funding package for cultural organisations.
When will recipients be announced?
The open call for submissions for the first Freelands Award opens on 26 January and closes on 24 March. The winners will be announced at an event in November.
The new award replaces the Freelands Foundation’s previous annual award; this initiative, which focused on enabling a UK arts organisations to present an exhibition of new work by a mid-career female artist, ran for eight editions between 2016 and 2023.
In its annual report, the foundation, which is registered as a charitable organisation, states that “the foundation is not reliant on funding from either the [UK] government or the private sector and is thus well insulated against changes to government spending and private sector investment in the arts”.
The Freelands Foundation is simultaneously backing a key education programme, The Superpower of Looking, which is run by the charity Art UK. The scheme helps UK primary school children “gain an essential superpower: the ability to really 'see'” and decode works of art.
