Does your building work for your museum or gallery? Do you think there could be areas of improvement in terms of collection care? Could you improve visitor access and environmental sustainability?

The Museum & Gallery Building Improvement Program (BIP) offers two opportunities for museums and galleries to improve their buildings.

You can apply for a Building Assessment Report and, if you’re successful, we’ll arrange for a heritage architect and a conservator to come to your building and produce a detailed assessment report that makes prioritised recommendations for how you can make improvements. This document can be incredibly useful in developing management plans, as well as in approaching Council or other bodies about necessary works.

The second opportunity is direct funding for building work. If you have already received a Building Assessment from the program, or if you have an equivalent report that meets the minimum requirements (see BIP page for details) you can apply for funding for one of the recommended areas of work.

Previous winners include:

• Lismore Regional Gallery, who commissioned an assessment of an old school building to determine its appropriateness as the new home of the gallery.
• Port Macquarie Museum who were successful in getting a Building Assessment Report, which lead the next year to funding for new drainage pipes as recommended in that report.
• Yamba Museum who were successful in getting a Building Assessment Report, which recommended repairs to their roof. They received funding for this roof repair under the program last year.

The Museum & Gallery Building Improvement Program is an Office of Environment and Heritage and Heritage Council of NSW program, administered by M&G NSW.

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