The BGI has been supported by the following grant-giving trusts and Lottery-funded organisations since the charity was founded in summer 2019:
In August 2021, BGI won funding from Ufi Voctech Trust’s Seed Fund for an ambitious programme to train a cohort of young women and non-binary people from Sheffield’s minority ethnic communities in games development. BGI will build an inspirational course that starts participants on the pathway towards careers in creative industries such as games.
In July 2021, National Videogame Museum, University of Sheffield and a consortium of Yorkshire schools were awarded funding for a two-year action research programme which will see children taking on the role of videogame designers and artists. BGI will advise teachers on professional development using videogames, sharing our expertise in games based learning and their connections with local games development companies.
In July 2021, the National Videogame Museum won funding for Playing with Power, a community-led project in which an artist in residence, Biome Collective, will lead a group of 40 Sheffield co-producers to explore, document and share their experiences and feelings about identity and representation to co-create a videogame about their folklore.
In November 2020, BGI won funding from the Yogscast’s Jingle Jam to create fund games making workshops in the National Videogame Museum for young people with a focus on disadvantaged youth and areas of deprivation.
In October 2020 the BGI received a lifesaving grant from the Culture Recovery Fund run by Arts Council of England. This recognised the national significance of our work and our Collection, and will help us outlast the second phase of the Covid-19 pandemic and continue to deliver our educational and cultural work to our community of 35,000 visitors and over 7,000 learners in our online programmes.
In August 2020, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Museums Association supported the BGI / National Videogame Museum with an award to collect histories of players of Nintendo’s ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ game during lockdown. The award was made from the Museums Association’s Sustaining Engagement with Collections Fund. This forthcoming collection will explore new ways of collecting, archiving and collecting videogame histories, and record for the first time ephemeral and intangible player experience.
In February 2020, Art Fund supported our Subject Specialist Network – the Videogame Heritage Society – which advises over 100 museums and collectors on the preservation of videogames. In October 2020, Art Fund also supported our National Videogame Gallery, a forthcoming project to showcase videogames art from diverse artists.
In January 2020, the Association of Independent Museums and Arts Council England awarded BGI/NVM a Hallmarks Grant Award to build a new CRM system to profile visitor, donor and marketing activity. AIM also supported BGI with some commercial museum consultancy from A Different View.
The charity’s predecessor has been supported by the following organisations over the years:
