The Designation Challenge Fund

The Designation Challenge Fund (DCF) has invested almost £13m of Renaissance funding since 2002 to support museums with Designated collections. The funding has been used to improve the management and accessibility of those collections for the benefit of the public.

Designated collections are those that have been identified as of outstanding national and international importance within England's non-national museums. More information about the Designation Scheme for museums, libraries and archives is available under the Designation section of this site.

DCF Awards

The documents below give a summary of the DCF awards since 2002. The latest round of grants awarded innovative projects that were taking forward some of the recommendations from the Museums Association's Collections for the Future report. The intention was to encourage the sharing of learning from projects. Details are below.

Project summaries 2006- 2008 (Word document 218 KB)
2004-2006 (HTML)
2002-2004 (HTML)

DCF Evaluation Reports

The evaluation report below summarises the achievements of Renaissance DCF projects. Case studies are provided which illustrate the improvements made to the care of collections and widening access to them.

DCF Report 2002-2004 (PDF 1090KB)

DCF Data Collection

In 2006 almost £500,000 of Renaissance funding was made available to all non-hub museums holding Designated collections. This was to allow them to collect and collate core audience and other data, in line with the process already in place for hub museums. Guidelines for this data collection are below.

 Designated Collection Holders: Data Collection Guidelines (PDF 142KB)

For more information about the Renaissance Designation Challenge Fund please contact Stephanie Lewis via email: stephanie.lewis@mla.gov.uk