Freelands Foundation Shifts £1.5m From Solo Shows to Art Education in UK Galleries

For eight years, a major British arts prize helped regional galleries give midcareer women artists the kind of high-profile solo exhibitions that can transform a career. Now the charity behind that award is redirecting the money away from headline shows and toward a less visible part of the art world: the education teams trying to keep art in front of the public as schools and councils cut back.

A new £1.5 million scheme

On Jan. 26, the London-based Freelands Foundation announced a new £1.5 million scheme to support visual art education across the United Kingdom. Over the next five years, three organisations each year will receive £100,000 to strengthen education work with schools, communities and other groups.

The Freelands Awards 2026 programme replaces the foundation’s previous annual prize that funded exhibitions of new work by midcareer female artists at regional museums and galleries. The shift marks a strategic move by one of the UK’s most prominent arts philanthropies toward shoring up what it describes as a fragile education infrastructure in galleries and museums.

“It’s exciting to be launching these awards at such a critical time,” said Henry Ward, director of the Freelands Foundation, in a statement. “Whilst 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.”

Who can apply—and what the funding covers

The foundation, established in 2015 by media executive Elisabeth Murdoch, is committing £1.5 million over five years. Each year, three winning organisations will receive £100,000 in relatively flexible funding. The money can be used for programming costs, staff wages and freelance fees, materials, some capital development, and core overheads such as rent and utilities, according to the foundation’s guidance.

The awards are open to UK-based organisations that consistently present visual art to the public and operate for charitable or public benefit purposes. Eligible applicants include registered charities, local authority museums and galleries, university-based museums and galleries, and some community interest companies and community benefit societies that meet charity-style restrictions on profit and asset distribution.

Individuals, for-profit companies and organisations that do not have regular public visual arts programmes cannot apply. Primary and secondary schools, further education colleges and university teaching departments are also excluded, as are sector bodies and organisations using fiscal sponsors. The foundation says applicants must have up-to-date safeguarding and equal access policies and be able to ring-fence the award funds.

Timeline and selection process

Expressions of interest opened in late January, with a deadline of March 24 at noon. Shortlisted organisations will receive visits from the judging panel in the summer, and three winners will be announced at an event in London in November. Each winning organisation will also collaborate with the foundation on a short case-study film about its work.

The judging panel includes Ward as chair, broadcaster and producer Gemma Cairney, artist and educator Joy Gregory, curator Jenni Lomax and art historian Ben Street. Shortlisted organisations will be assessed not only on their project proposals but on site visits that look at how education is embedded in their wider work.

From exhibitions for women artists to education infrastructure

The new awards follow eight editions of the original Freelands Award, launched in 2016. That prize gave around £100,000 to a regional UK institution to stage a major exhibition of new work by a midcareer woman artist, with a portion of the money going directly to the artist. Previous iterations backed projects such as a large-scale exhibition by British filmmaker Lis Rhodes at Nottingham Contemporary and, most recently, a show of new work by Joy Gregory at Whitechapel Gallery in London.

The latest scheme does not include a gender requirement or direct payments to individual artists. Instead, it focuses on organisations’ “recent or ongoing projects demonstrating commitment to progressive art education approaches with a demonstrable impact,” with an emphasis on visual art in formal and informal settings, from schools and youth clubs to hospitals and prisons.

Ward argued that galleries and museums are now central to how people in Britain encounter art.

“Galleries and museums play a significant role, not just within the curriculum and school education, but as resources to educate all of us,” he said in an interview to coincide with the launch. These institutions, he added, can work with “local communities, artists, prisons, hospitals. There’s a whole world of extraordinary educational practice out there.”

The backdrop: cuts, curriculum pressure and shrinking access

The foundation explicitly links the awards to what Ward called “15 years of cuts and anti-art rhetoric.” Over the past decade and a half, arts advocates and researchers have documented a steady decline in arts education and public cultural funding across the UK.

The share of GCSE exam entries in arts subjects in England has fallen from more than 13% in 2010 to just over 7% in recent years, a decline of around 48%, according to analysis by the campaigning group Campaign for the Arts. A-level entries in arts subjects have dropped from about 15% of the total to around 10%, a fall of roughly one-third.

Local government revenue spending on culture in England fell by 48% per person in real terms between 2009–10 and 2022–23, with similarly steep cuts in Scotland and Wales, according to a 2024 report on the state of the arts. Core cultural funding from central government and national arts councils has also declined in real terms across the UK nations.

Teachers’ unions and advocacy groups say these trends have led to the loss of specialist teachers, shrinking timetables for art, drama, music and dance, and in some cases the complete removal of arts subjects from school options. A survey of teachers in England in 2025 found most respondents reported declines in pupils’ fine motor skills and said art was not adequately prioritised in the curriculum.

Many in the sector point to the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), introduced in 2010–11, as a turning point. The EBacc measures schools on pupils’ performance in a set of academic subjects, including English, maths, sciences, a language and either history or geography, but not the arts. Arts leaders argue the measure has pushed schools to devote more time and resources to EBacc subjects at the expense of creative disciplines.

Ward said he had seen a clear impact on how often schools visit galleries.

“If children are not brought into these spaces as part of their school experience, and if they’re not being taken by families, they’re unlikely to go as an adult,” he said. “That has a long-term impact on participation and audiences.”

In late 2025, the UK government signaled that it intends to scrap the EBacc and develop new plans to strengthen creative subjects, a move welcomed by major cultural institutions including Tate and the National Theatre. But arts groups say the effects of earlier policy and funding decisions are still being felt.

Why flexibility matters—and what it can’t fix

Within this landscape, galleries and museums have increasingly been asked to serve as de facto alternative classrooms and community hubs. Many run outreach programmes for pupil referral units, special educational needs settings and youth groups, as well as projects in hospitals and prisons. These activities are often staffed by specialist educators and freelance artists and depend on a patchwork of grants and local support.

When budgets tighten, education roles are frequently vulnerable.

“In many organisations, the learning and education team is the first to find themselves being made redundant or their hours cut,” Ward said. “We want to support and spotlight the work they do because it is central, not peripheral.”

Unlike many project grants, the Freelands scheme allows recipients to spend the money on salaries and operational costs as well as programme delivery—support that sector figures say can be equivalent to a full education department budget for a year in a small regional gallery, or can underwrite multi-year community projects that are otherwise hard to sustain.

At the same time, the scale of the awards is modest compared with the wider funding picture. One hundred thousand pounds a year may secure posts or expand programmes in three organisations annually, but it cannot reverse nationwide staff losses or reopen closed services. The foundation’s rules also prevent the money from being used for political campaigning or lobbying.

Freelands says it hopes the case-study films it will commission with each winner, and the visibility of the awards themselves, will help draw attention to examples of effective art education and the role cultural institutions can play.

Past recipients of Freelands funding are eligible to apply provided they propose new projects that have not previously been supported by the foundation. Ward said the organisation sees the awards as part of a broader shift in its work, which has also included studio fellowships in art schools and grants for collaborations between teachers and artists.

He described the foundation’s mission as championing art education and the idea that “making is fundamental.”

“Teaching and learning are not separate from artistic practice,” he said. “They’re part of the same ecology.”

As schools, councils and arts organisations wait to see whether government policy on creative subjects and cultural funding will change course, three galleries or museums will find out this autumn that they have secured a significant financial buffer for their education work. For the children and adults taking part in workshops, visits and projects that might otherwise have been scaled back or cancelled, the shift from solo exhibitions to classrooms may be largely invisible. For the institutions that run those programmes, it could help decide whether their education studios stay open at all.