Museums And Archives

Cheltenham's BIG Museum Project

Through this project, we will engage local communities to co-produce a museum which is relevant and accessible to all. Since our partial re-opening in 2022, we have been working towards a new participatory practice strategy. The only galleries we have not yet adopted our new approach on is the long-closed collections galleries. These galleries have remained unchanged for 40+ years and are currently inaccessible to visitors, making it difficult to share Cheltenham’s unique heritage. We are now at a pivotal point, having completed building works on these galleries in January 2024 with funding from DCMS Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund. This provided us with the once in a generation opportunity to completely re-imagine and redisplay the collection collaboratively with our communities. We will deepen our public consultation and engagement, develop a new co-produced collections and engagement strategy, and fit out our new access-focused spaces, creating relevant, dynamic collections displays.