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31
May 2024
Ripon Museums Trust awarded £261,000 grant to expand exhibition offerings
Ripon Musems Trust has been awarded a £261,625 grant to improve the exhibitions in one of its museums.
The trust, which operates three museums in Ripon, last year applied for the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to improve the overall visitor experience.
Community curator, Dr Laura Allan, today told the Stray Ferret the money will be used to “redevelop and refresh all the exhibitions” at the Workhouse Museum.
Ms Allan said the trust will “re-research the stories told at the museum” to create “all new displays and exhibitions”.
She added:
The current displays were curated around ten to 15 years ago, so they’re in desperate need of a refresh.
They were also put together by volunteer curators, so we’re going to put in more updated interactive elements and bring it to the standard of displays in other museums.
The trust will invest in providing more in-depth information around the museum, Ms Allan said, adding there will be more immersive displays and features for children and families.
The money will also fund a “recreation” of the workhouse. Ms Allan said this will allow the staff to better re-enact the lives of those that went to the workhouse:
When poor people actually came to the workhouse, they would have been segregated from each other. We want to recreate that, so women go one route, men go another and children follow the route they would have experience back then.
We’re going to open up parts of the museum that are not currently open, and we’re just going to tell the complete story of the workhouse.
Ms Allan said newly-secured funding is all part of the trust’s “masterplan”.
The charity also recently applied for a heritage lottery grant to continue improvements and redevelopments across the museum.
Ms Allan told the Stray Ferret the museum will carry out the exhibition makeovers in phases.
She said this means parts of the Workhouse Museum will be closed intermittently, but “something should always be open to the public”.
The trust hopes the full regeneration of the museum will be completed by 2026.
Ripon Museums Trust also operates in the Courthouse Museum and the Prison and Police Museum in the city.
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