New £40 million trust to create nationwide legacy from 2012 games

Howard Lake | 26 November 2007 | News

The Legacy Trust UK has been launched, offering £40 million that will use the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to promote culture and sport among young people and communities, and leave a lasting legacy of the events.

The Legacy Trust UK has been endowed with £40 million by The Big Lottery Fund, the Arts Council and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It will be used to support cultural, artistic, educational and sporting activities that celebrate the 2012 Games.

As well as funding projects that benefit the whole UK, such as £6million for the UK School Games, the trust will allocated its funds to specific projects via the three nations and nine English regions of the UK.

The Trust will work with the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG). It is expected that many of the projects that it funds will be eligible for inclusion in the programme for the Cultural Olympiad, which is a key element of the 2012 Games.

Dugald Mackie, chair of Legacy Trust UK said: “This money will create a legacy from the London Games that will benefit people all over the country for years to come. The Trust intends to make a small number of high-value grants to partners that can co-ordinate significant programmes to deliver on our promise. We expect to make the first awards next autumn”.

The Trust was established by the City of London which led a consortium that included the East London Business Alliance, Business in the Community, Yorkshire Forward and TimeBank. This consortium was one of several that put forward proposals to the funders as to how the fund should be spent.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.