National Lottery Grants for Heritage

Our Gracemount Heritage

Applicant: Gracemount Mansion Development Trust

Project description: To engage with a range of local residents, community organisations and other groups to discover, learn about, share and celebrate the heritage of the buildings and greenspaces at the Gracemount Mansion community hub. The project will run a programme of learning workshops and public events in-person, at other venues and online to involve a diverse range of local residents and community organisations.

Decision: Award grant of £9,998 (100% of total costs)

Alloway Tunnel ART

Applicant: Alloway Railway Tunnel ART SCIO

Project description: To create an art installation within a disused railway tunnel at the Brig o’ Doon, through which the Alloway to Greenan active-travel pathway passes. This inclusive community project, led by the highly acclaimed artist Chris Rutterford will provide an extra-curricular experience for school pupils, college students and people of all ages from the wider community. It will bring people together, working with a common goal to celebrate Ayrshire’s social history in the creation of a living art installation for this iconic location.

Decision: Reject

Eco-museum of Scottish Mining Landscapes

Applicant: University of Stirling

Project description: The project will provide a long-term home for the Eco-museum of Mining Landscape focusing on the Scottish Midland coalfield extending from Fife to Ayrshire (the first industrial eco-museum in Scotland). Key to the eco-museum are self-contained landscape journeys. These routes narrate the history of individual collieries, their related industries and associated communities, through the surviving landscape features, industrial archaeology and the social environment, housing, sport and leisure. All brought to life with video, sound and oral testimonies/memories to capture the intangible heritage of the industry.

Decision: Reject

Parklea – looking to the past, linking to the future.

Applicant: Parklea Association Branching Out Ltd

Project description: This project aims to include clients in a variety of projects that will be engaging and educational, relating to the heritage of the site on which Parklea has stood for 27 years, and allow them to showcase their work to educate future visitors.

Decision: Award grant of £88,238 (100% of total costs)

Emergency Works to St Margaret's Church Tower Braemar

Applicant: Historic Churches Scotland

Project description: The first project goal is to secure the tower and hence the stability of the Category A-listed church while also reversing failures of repairs carried out in the 1990s. Permanent repair of the tower will ensure that the partnership project to secure the long-term future and enhanced use of St Margaret’s can proceed, and the shared vision of Historic Churches Scotland and community-led St Margaret’s Trust can be realised.

Decision: Reject

Loss and Recovery: The story of GY106 Leicester City

Applicant: Friends of the Hoy Kirk

Project description: To commemorate the story of GY106 Leicester City, a trawler wrecked on the shore of Hoy in 1953. The story is one of loss and recovery. The project will explore both the maritime heritage and social legacy of its grounding through a multidisciplinary series of activities commencing this year, the 70th anniversary of the event.

Decision: Award grant of £39,632 (97.44% of total costs)

Heritage Community Project

Applicant: Community Foundation For Planetary Healing

Project description: A heritage community project that aims to create a community space for intergenerational engagement centred around learning about the eight Celtic festivals and Celtic trees throughout the year. The core focus of the project is to engage a diverse range of people, including young people representing the future generation, in outdoor activities that not only deepen their understanding of Scottish heritage but also enhance their wellbeing, boost confidence and improve connections and communication with themselves and others.

Decision: Award grant of £9,952 (100% of total costs)

"Doon the Watter"; remembering Glasgow's summer holidays in print.

Applicant: Letterspace CIC

Project description: To host a series of letterpress printing workshops to celebrate Glasgow’s summer holidays of the 20th century. The project will work with local community groups who cater for older people. Participants will have a chance to reminisce, record and share their own memories of past trips to the Clyde coastal resorts – 'Doon the Watter'.

Decision: Award grant of £9,964 (100% of total costs)

Cromarty Courthouse Museum: Resilience and Development Project

Applicant: Cromarty Courthouse Trust

Project description: The strategic aim of this project is to develop the museum into a resilient and inclusive community resource with national and international appeal. The project will create a new post of a full-time museum manager/curator for two years with a remit covering three areas: community engagement, financial resilience and care of the heritage. 

Decision: Award grant of £63,476 (53.86% of total costs)

Aithne/Identity

Applicant: Greenfaulds High School

Project description: This project focuses on Scottish Gaelic heritage and culture, with an emphasis on identity. It aims to recognise, celebrate and commemorate the influence of Gaelic culture on the history, traditions and language of Scotland. It will involve staff and pupils at Greenfaulds High School (GHS) as well as the wider community. GHS offers Gaelic provision alongside mainstream education, but Gaelic speakers are a minority. This project aims to raise awareness of Scottish Gaelic heritage and culture – particularly local ties to the past – and to celebrate and value it.

Decision: Award grant of £10,000 (100% of total costs)

Cultural History of Nigerian Food

Applicant: CENTRE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION SCOTLAND CIC

Project description: This project is looking to build upon the success of the YOYP KPS Cycle Project and apply the learning from it in creating a new, enhanced and increased service to develop the capacity and resilience of the organisation. It aims to further increase awareness of the main heritage project with the African community resident in Glasgow, Renfrewshire and South Lanarkshire. 

Decision: Award grant of £76,850 (93.89% of total costs)

ERMAC Social History Project: My Life Through WWII

Applicant: Erskine Hospital

Project description: Erskine is Scotland’s leading provider of care for ex-Service men and women, with over 100 years’ experience caring for and supporting the Armed Forces community. The project will carry out oral history interviews with members, capturing their experiences as children, teenagers or adults during and after that historic time. It may therefore also include later experiences, whether of active service, national service or civilian life, with the aim of documenting these recollections before it is too late.

Decision: Award grant of £10,000 (100% of total costs)

100 Years of Community Ownership (Working Title)

Applicant: Community Land Scotland

Project description: 100 Years of Community Ownership (HYOCO) will share the story and impact of community ownership on rural and urban Scotland. HYOCO will create a living archive of one of the most important political, economic and social movements in Scotland in the last 100 plus years. It will celebrate the achievements of pioneers and provide valuable resources to support new and would-be community ownership groups.

Decision: Award grant of £215,510 (84.04% of total costs)

Old Clyne School (OCS) Redevelopment

Applicant: Clyne Heritage Society

Project description: To redevelop the derelict building to become a flagship facility, so that local communities can fully engage with its unique heritage in a comfortable, inclusive, accessible and highly visible, purpose-designed heritage centre and museum.

Decision: Award grant of £250,000 (100% of total costs)

"Our schooldays - memories and legacies" Heritage tales from Newhaven, Trinity and Leith Harbour

Applicant: Heart of Newhaven Community SCIO

Project description: To use the heritage of schooldays as a means of bringing people together in our Area of Benefit enabling all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds to learn more about each other by sharing experiences and memories. The project aims to ensure that The Victoria Building continues to inspire generations of local people, giving a sense of place to both more established and more recent communities. There will be a programme of urgent repairs to ensure its new future as an intergenerational community hub.

Decision: Reject

Restoration of Bothy

Applicant: Dunbeath Preservation Trust

Project description: To restore and repurpose a Salmon Bothy as a holiday let to diversify and grow an alternative income stream to support a sustainable future for the heritage museum. The project would create two local jobs and save an empty building. Initially funding would pay for the Conservation Architects Proposal to find out if it is in fact possible to repurpose the Bothy.

Decision: Reject

Culture and community value

Applicant: Gambians and friends in Scotland Community Association

Project description: GAMSCA would like to organise its annual cultural festival, which is scheduled to take place 11 August 2023 at Glasgow. This year's theme is culture and community value. This will promote diverse community cultures within the city and the importance of cultures in community values.

Decision: Reject

Restoring the Living Heritage of Coille a' Thorra Ghairbh, Applecross

Applicant: Applecross Community Company

Project description: Our project, “Restoring the Living Heritage of Coille a' Thorra Ghairbh, Applecross” will restore the site to Atlantic rainforest habitat, improving its biodiversity while simultaneously “re-storying” and promoting its archaeological features. The project will put Applecross on the map for community-led restoration, regenerative tourism and heritage activities enhancing local, regional and international audiences, and building the resilience of the organisation.

Decision: Award grant of £247,922 (82.94% of total costs)

Accessing Websters Heritage

Applicant: Fact Three

Project description: Part of the project will involve ‘Mapping Webster’ by building a database of his work across the central belt of Scotland. The project encompasses several components including preserving and cataloguing tangible and intangible heritage, heritage education and data collection, collation and presentation, and access improvements related to the building and stained glass.

Decision: Award grant of £250,000 (64.03% of total costs)

New Deer and Roon Aboot: A History

Applicant: New Deer Community Association

Project description: In the year that the culturally significant Book Of Deer returned to its spiritual home in the North East of Scotland a local author has assembled a collation of history, folklore and stories mostly relevant to the village of New Deer and the surrounding countryside. With the ever-changing population many old ways of life, language and culture are being lost and this book is an attempt to gather together as many memories, traditions and myths and set them down before they are lost forever. 

Decision: Reject

Central Scotland Green Network Routemap to Green Finance Mobilisation

Applicant: Green Action Trust

Project description: This project will identify, aggregate and accelerate project development and delivery at scale for people and nature within the CSGN area which would not be possible without private finance. In the second phase, the routemap will be used to develop a prioritised list of projects with specific investment options and quantified anticipated returns on investment. The third phase, would be to secure private finance to implement prioritised projects.

Decision: Award grant of £49,816 (51.19% of total costs)

Make Rewilding Your Business (MRYB)

Applicant: SCOTLAND: The Big Picture

Project description: SCOTLAND: The Big Picture's (SBP) 'Northwoods Rewilding Network' (NRN) is a Scotland-wide chain of landholdings committed to nature recovery. Approximately 20% of the sites are community owned. Aims are to ready a pipeline of up to 100 ‘investment ready’ nature restoration projects across Scotland, attract private investment into the restoration of natural capital assets and develop mechanisms to engage communities in project design and sharing of benefits supporting a just transition.

Decision: Award grant of £194,310 (100% of total costs)

Goshawk

Applicant: Highland Boundary Ltd.

Project description: To scale an existing proof-of-concept circular business to create greater impact against the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Also to re-connect people back to the lost uses and culture of our native flora.

Decision: Reject

Feasibility assessment for an Aggregated Whole Farm approach to accessing natural capital markets.

Applicant: Soil Association Limited (The)

Project description: This Development project aims to address some aspects of this complexity through an aggregation approach.  

Decision: Award grant of £50,000 (50% of total costs)

Unlocking the restoration of degraded peatland on crofting and common grazing land

Applicant: Forest Carbon Limited

Project description: Through the use of pilot projects, this project will develop a replicable approach and tools (including community benefit sharing mechanisms, contracting arrangements, and governance models) to tackle these challenges, and generate buy-in from communities. This is expected to facilitate the participation of private investors in peatland restoration transactions on common grazing and crofting lands.

Decision: Reject

Capitalising Nature; Streamlining Project Scoping and Future Scenario Modelling to Drive Cost Savings and Foster Community Collaboration

Applicant: Rethink Carbon Limited

Project description: The ambition is to revolutionise land management in Scotland by providing a fully automated, accessible and science-based Software as a Service (SAAS) platform for evaluating possible land use scenarios and facilitating nature-based projects. The project aims to be the go to solution for anyone involved in land management to quickly discover the optimal solution to maximise carbon sequestration, biodiversity, sustainability and community benefits.

Decision: Reject

TreesAI: Building a climate-resilient and just Glasgow Region by directing investment towards urban trees

Applicant: Dark Matter Laboratories Limited

Project description: Through FIRNS, taking stock of the learnings from TreesAI first Pilot in Glasgow, this project aims to collaborate with partners to bring a portfolio of NbS to Glasgow City Region to get it ready for investment. The project aims to build a framework that can be used in other places, and that helps channel money into these kinds of projects. It wants to make sure that the projects benefit the local community, and that the value of nature is recognised.

Decision: Reject

Edinburgh Garden City Programme - Water of Leith Catchment

Applicant: City of Edinburgh Council

Project description: To create an evidence base of the socioeconomic value that can be generated by investing in urban projects that create natural capital assets and blue-green infrastructure and thereby contribute to nature recovery.

Decision: Award grant of £50,000 (50% of total costs)

Pentland Land Managers Nature Restoration Pilot

Applicant: Pentland Land Managers Association

Project description: To create an inspiring nature restoration and nature positive land management plan for the Pentland Hills where rural businesses, communities and the environment prosper sustainably. This will be funded by offering high integrity nature restoration investment opportunities to large corporations based in the City of Edinburgh and nearby, which are looking to fund local projects.

Decision: Reject

Planning the Financial Future for Wild Strathfillan

Applicant: Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Countryside Trust

Project description: Ambitions for this FIRNS development funding are:

• To review the potential longer-term financial options and mechanisms for the various land uses and planned Wild Strathfillan conservation projects.
• To deliver a research study to consider the possibility of a Wild Strathfillan CIC to oversee and develop circular economy opportunities
• To review additionality, options for wider investment and to create a framework to further identify, define and monitor the community benefits.

Decision: Award grant of £42,195 (50% of total costs)

Joint Ventures for Scalable Community Benefits from Rewilding

Applicant: Highlands Rewilding Ltd

Project description: This project aims to develop community prosperity by generating investment-ready Joint Ventures (JVs) with the communities local to the sites Bunloit estate, Inverness-shire (513 hectares), Beldorney estate, Aberdeenshire (359 hectares), and Tayvallich estate in Argyll (1,300 hectares).

Decision: Award grant of £97,350 (50% of total costs)

Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park - Nature Finance Platform Design

Applicant: Palladium International Limited

Project description: To develop an innovative investment platform to crowd in responsible private finance to help bridge Scotland’s estimated £20billion nature funding gap.

Decision: Reject

Buyer-seller contracts for carbon and other nature markets

Applicant: Scottish Forestry

Project description: This project will develop a publicly available, simple purchase and sale contract for Pending Issuance Units and Woodland/Peatland Carbon Units, empowering smaller-scale and community participants whilst enabling the market to scale. It will also bring greater integrity and ensure carbon standards are ICVCM compliant.

Decision: Award grant of £109,652 (44.59% of total costs)

Arkaig Natural Capital: Regenerative Investment in West Lochaber

Applicant: Donald Andrew John Cameron

Project description: This project’s ambition is to facilitate landscape-scale nature recovery across the Arkaig catchment by financing programmes of habitat restoration and funding a transition to regenerative land management models, underpinned by new sources of revenue.

Decision: Award grant of £44,900 (50% of total costs)

Developing a sustainable Scottish source to sea, green finance model

Applicant: Fisheries Management Scotland

Project description: The ambition of the project is to create a sustainable funding mechanism to harness green finance and deliver effective restoration work at scale, from source to sea.

Decision: Award grant of £48,750 (52.7% of total costs)

TreeStory Impact Platform Development

Applicant: TreeStory Ltd

Project description: The project aims to launch a product which integrates carbon, biodiversity benefit, ecosystem services and community benefit into a single natural heritage restoration package. It will create a digital membership platform to connect businesses to exceptional natural heritage ecological restoration projects for the betterment of nature and people.

Decision: Reject

Scotland's Universities and Colleges' Land for Carbon

Applicant: Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges

Project description: This project aims to leverage the land held within institutional estates to develop Woodland Carbon Code or Peatland Code verified projects for institutions to create carbon credits to help them achieve their net-zero targets. The project can then be replicated across the wider public sector which covers more than 12% of Scotland’s land mass.

Decision: Reject

Saving Scotland's Rainforest with Natural Capital Finance

Applicant: Argyll and the Isles Coast and Countryside Trust (ACT)

Project description: The ambition is to increase the scale and pace of Scotland’s rainforest restoration by overcoming two primary barriers: fragmentation of landownership and lack of private finance investment. 

Decision: Award grant of £236,228 (100% of total costs)

Colonsay Conversations: community building to develop a nature-based economy for everyone

Applicant: Donald Alexander Howard

Project description: The project’s vision is for an island where nature, community and economy flourish together, attracting investment in which everyone feels the benefit. Through strong relationships of trust between industry, residents, land managers, and public services, the island community develops a solution-driven, collaborative, interdependent approach to tackling the ecological and social challenges it faces by participating in the emerging nature economy.

Decision: Reject

Solway Coast and Marine Project

Applicant: Dumfries and Galloway Council

Project description: Aims to see the Solway Firth as a thriving healthy sustainable ecosystem where healthy nature capital provides ecosystem services that support communities, builds the Wellbeing Economy, contributes to Community Wealth Building and the Transition to Net Zero. Coastal communities would benefit  through positive engagement with the marine and coastal environment and be empowered to act for its continued health and sustainability.

Decision: Award grant of £47,500 (50% of total costs)

Investment in Nature & Community - Isle of Arran - W L Farm & Partners

Applicant: W L Farm & Consultancy

Project description: The ambitions for this project are:

• To demonstrate that it is possible to create market mechanisms at a local level which deliver value locally and nationally, and in doing so to demonstrate how combining carbon and biodiversity together delivers more value and less trade-offs.
• To demonstrate the opportunity to use this to draw in long-term investment for the management of the land.
• To demonstrate how the local communities, as guardians of their environment, can benefit from that ongoing protection.
• To put in place a mechanism to deliver positive local change through private sector investment.

Decision:  Reject

West Loch Lomond Nature Recovery

Applicant: Luss Estates Company

Project description: The project’s core ambition is to establish a network of large, connected nature recovery areas that span the land west of Loch Lomond from Luss to Arrochar. Within these areas, large tracts of land will be given over to ecological restoration through the reinstatement of rainforest habitats. 

Decision: Reject

Earth / Nature Investment Academy - Training and Talent Development

Applicant: Soil Association Certification Ltd

Project description: The overall programme will be focused on the development of a range of training and capacity building products to address the skills gaps currently holding back growth of environmental markets in Scotland. It will have a primary focus on verification and validation, but with the potential to broaden the scope to cover other aspects of project delivery across natural capital markets.

Decision:  Reject

It's In Our Nature: Place Powered Futures

Applicant: Assynt Development Trust Ltd

Project description: To proactively and collaboratively ensure that the emerging natural capital economy enables communities, including landowners, and nature to thrive in the long term.

Decision: Award grant of £49,804 (45.44% of total costs)

Financing Natural Flood Management for Communities and Wildlife of the Eddleston Water

Applicant: Tweed Forum

Project description: To reduce flood risk to communities in the catchment through co-creation of a Community Investment Company (CIC) to secure funds to pay land managers to install NFM measures. Reduction of flood risk is the prime purpose and ‘service’ this project will sell.

Decision: Award grant of £117,185 (50.21% of total costs)

Annan Riparian Restoration Network

Applicant: Galloway Fisheries Trust

Project description: The ambitions of our project are to take the concepts and connections that have been developed so far and progress them significantly towards an investment-ready project. 

Decision: Award grant of £35,076 (50% of total costs)

Creation of multi-benefit revenue delivery models for saltmarsh restoration in Scotland

Applicant: Jacobs UK Ltd

Project description: This proposal will find and evaluate new sites for saltmarsh restoration through managed realignment. By assessing the engineering/economic viability of sites and investor interest, it will create a model for future project delivery. 

Decision: Reject

Scottish Nature Impact Fund Feasibility Study

Applicant: AchieveGood Ltd

Project description: This project, a collaboration between AchieveGood, Social Investment Scotland (SIS), and NatureScot, aims to explore the feasibility of creating a blended fund structure for nature-based solutions in Scotland. The project is inspired by the success of blended investment funds helping to establish investment markets in other contexts and by the recent creation of the Big Nature Impact Fund in England.

Decision: Reject

Braes of Alyth: Wild Cores and Corridors

Applicant: Bamff Farms

Project description: The vision is for a landscape revitalised and reconnected by restored watercourses and re-wooded riparian zones, joining together existing fragments of ancient woodland and new biodiversity cores. This will create a landscape that is more resilient to the climate emergency, and where biodiversity increases in a time of frightening decline. 

Decision: Reject

Biochar Circular Economy Model

Applicant: Sustainable Thinking Scotland CIC

Project description: This project is focused on achieving several goals and objectives. Firstly, it aims to enhance current social and environmental projects by demonstrating the benefits of the Biochar Circular Economy model. To support this, it will extend staff contracts, ensuring continuity throughout the 2024 growing season. 

Decision: Reject

River Catchment Restoration Pilot at Alladale Wilderness Reserve

Applicant: The European Nature Trust

Project description: To establish a novel financial mechanism for delivering scalable riparian woodland creation schemes with associated peatland restoration. 

Decision: Award grant of £20,800 (100% of total costs)

Investing in Scotland's Natural and Social Capital for the benefit of its Rural Communities

Applicant: The Scottish Council for Development and Industry

Project description: To develop an investment vehicle capable of attracting investment at multiple sites over multiple years. The unique nature of the vehicle is both that it is not-for-profit and that it will seek to share the benefits of the acquisition with the community, including in some cases transfer of assets. 

Decision: Reject

Community Benefits Certification Plug-In

Applicant: Deciding Matters

Project description: Deciding Matters and partners aim to establish an outline business case for a new UK-wide standard for community participation and how this would translate to a clear set of community benefits, under succinct community wealth building principles.

Decision: Award grant of £50,000 (50% of total costs)

Dreel Burn Investment Readiness

Applicant: Fife Coast and Countryside Trust

Project description: To drive and facilitate investment in sustainable and productive landscapes that meet the needs of nature, people, and the economy. It will realise the community vision of the Dreel Burn as a clean, biodiverse and vibrant river, valued by the farming, fishing, rural and urban communities of the East Neuk.

Decision: Award grant of £198,854 (55% of total costs)

Leven Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs)

Applicant: Forth Rivers Trust

Project description: By connecting landowners, communities and businesses with each other, LENs create a network of resources that can be used to generate sustainable, profitable and environment-friendly solutions. 

Decision: Award grant of £99,999 (43.06% of total costs)

Scottish Highlands Estate of the Future

Applicant: Oxygen Conservation Ltd

Project description: In line with a more balanced approach to land use and conservation, this project will place a greater focus on sustainable and environmentally-responsible management practices, prioritising the protection of the natural environment, heritage assets, wildlife and ecosystem services.

Decision: Reject

Flow Country Green Finance Initiative

Applicant: North Highland Initiative

Project description: The aim of the Flow Country Green Finance Initiative (FCGFI) is to restore degraded peatland in the Flow Country, reversing biodiversity loss, combating climate change and supporting the local economy and communities through jobs, skills and benefit-sharing arrangements.

Decision: Award grant of £120,000 (50% of total costs)

Enabling Markets for Marine Natural Capital

Applicant: The James Hutton Institute

Project description: By robustly and scientifically quantifying and verifying the ecosystem service and natural capital enhancement of community based Native Oyster restoration it is possible to develop a credible and transparent standard that forms the foundation of a high-quality nature positive investment market. 

Decision: Award grant of £56,348 (56% of total costs)

Biodiversity crediting for woodlands, peatlands and other ecosystems

Applicant: Scottish Forestry on behalf of IUCN UK Peatland Programme

Project description: The Project Manager will review MRVs for biodiversity, drawing on experience implementing biodiversity crediting in other standards, and considering their applicability to Scotland and the rest of the UK (for example Plan Vivo, Credit Nature, Verra, Gold Standard, Operation Wallacea and more). 

Decision: Award grant of £94,918 (50% of total costs)

Advancing the UK Saltmarsh Code in Scotland

Applicant: UK Centre For Ecology & Hydrology

Project description: This development project will build on the NEIRF work by expanding evidence gathering, piloting on Scottish sites and deep-diving into the Scottish-specific enablers and barriers to restoration. 

Decision: Award grant of £49,865 (50% of total costs)

Grant increase requests

Capacity Building, Digital Enhancement and Professional Services

Applicant: Dundee Industrial Heritage Ltd

Project description: To ease debilitating capacity issues which will enable approved purposes to be achieve; to undertake additional work to review options for ongoing operation of the Trust, and to take further steps to improve energy efficiencies and reduce running costs.

Decision: Award grant increase of £250,000 to make total grant of £500,000

Discovering the Deep: A new exploration of Scotland’s historic and natural deepwater marine heritage.

Applicant: Dynamic Earth Charitable Trust

Project description: A grant increase has been requested as a result of increased costs in the capital element of the project. The construction industry has experienced an unprecedented series of events including Brexit, the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, conflict in Ukraine and significant energy price increases which have led to material price increases, labour shortages and transportation/logistics implications. These factors have all contributed to increased costs across all elements.

Decision: Award grant increase of £43,435 to make total grant of £486,435