DIGITAL HERITAGE SERVICES

Introduction to HLF and digital heritage

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) distributes a share of funds raised by the National Lottery. Since 1994 we have awarded £7.7billion to over 42,000 projects across the UK, ranging from major capital projects at iconic heritage sites to small education and community projects. HLF is administered by the Trustees of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and gives grants to support a wide range of projects involving the local, regional and national heritage of the United Kingdom. HLF invests in the cultural and natural heritage of the UK and aims to make a lasting difference for both heritage and people. This is reflected in our outcomes for heritage, people and communities which underpin all our grant-making. We plan to continue to drive forward our progressive agenda of investing in heritage that people value and broadening the range and depth of National Lottery player's engagement with heritage. We want more people and a broader range of people to take an active part in heritage and place inclusive engagement with people and communities at the heart of HLF funding. HLF is currently funding a significant number of projects with digital activity that includes: large-scale and small-scale digitisation of existing analogue heritage materials (paper/sound/film/video); websites and apps with heritage content; and the presentation, preservation and sustainability of all these digital outputs. We are also funding a smaller number of projects that include virtual reality; augmented reality and immersive experiences; 3D laser and other forms of scanning; and location based experiences such as geo-caching. The content of these digital outputs comes from a range of sources, including the public (e.g. crowd-sourcing of user generated content, citizen science or community history projects) and includes born-digital material in a range of formats made by project participants and professionals. Projects sometimes also require more generic expertise related to digital: creating a brief for developers and other technical suppliers; budgets and costing; staffing and creating job descriptions; project management of digital activity; archiving of digitised and born-digital assets/materials; rights clearance, licensing and distribution of digital materials; and evaluation of digital activity/outputs. This tender exercise is for HLF to recruit a cohort of specialists, entitled Consultants, who can support the assessment, mentoring and monitoring of the digital aspects of such projects. We are seeking professionals with sufficiently broad and general digital experience to work across a range of heritage areas and types of project including galleries, libraries, archives, museums, archaeology and natural heritage. At the same time, we recognise that an individual Consultant's skills and experiences are unlikely to cover all the areas of specialist knowledge we require. A FULL DESCRIPTION IS IN THE ATTACHED DOCUMENTS.