The question

UK heritage science (the application of scientific techniques to heritage artefacts) has long fallen through the gaps of UK research funding. Being neither fully science nor fully humanities, it kept getting overlooked.  

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) set out to change that. Could we help them make the case for game-changing infrastructure investment? Could we help them identify and demonstrate the value of investment to tell a better story?

What we did

In 2022 we helped AHRC draft its Outline Business Case (OBC) and secure £80m in funding from the UKRI Infrastructure Fund and World Class Labs. This funded a five-year programme to develop a long-term, distributed national research infrastructure for the sector (Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science – RICHeS).  

In 2024 we were re-appointed to lead the concurrent five-year evaluation of this programme, including separate process, impact and value for money evaluations. Leading a team of technical and sector specialists and applying novel methods (which reflected the community-building aspirations of the programme), we’re now helping AHRC understand the impact of its programme, and tell that story in a compelling, engaging way. 

What happened

RICHeS is an example of how we work across the lifecycle of our clients’ projects. First we drafted the key Strategic, Economic and Financial Cases to help AHRC secure funding for this programme – with the resulting OBC praised by DSIT officials as one of the best they had seen. Then we used our understanding of sector challenges and data gaps to develop a bespoke evaluation methodology to get to the heart of what this programme was delivering.  

Through this work we’re helping AHRC understand not just the impact of RICHeS but also how these impacts are being realised. This helps to strengthen the evidence base for ongoing sector support, as well as their next large-scale business cases.