Final round of IAA grants

Grants are adjudicated via a two-stage process, starting with a simple outline proposal submitted by a MOLA staff member. 

Outline proposals 

• Call opens - Monday 12th October 2026

• Deadline for submissions - Tuesday 1st December 2026

• A MOLA panel will select the projects they want to invite for a second round of applications

2nd round proposals

• 2nd round opens - Monday 14th December 2026

• Deadline for 2nd round - Friday 5th March 2027

• Successful projects will start end of March 2027 

• Awards must finish within 9 months of project start date

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.  

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.

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.