Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds: TikTok names viral Yorkshire video among best content in 2024

The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds is the only UK museum to be featured in the TikTok content round-up of the year.

Every year, the social media platform TikTok, known for its short form mobile video clips, explores accounts from all over the world to find the best content. This year, they highlighted the Royal Armouries’ TikTok channel, which uses a light-hearted approach to explore the national collection of arms and armour.

After launching their TikTok channel earlier this year, the Royal Armouries rapidly grew its audiences, and went viral in September 2024 when they posted their take on the trend of marketing videos featuring Gen Z marketing scripts and language.

Since gaining nearly 9,000,000 views, the video has helped increase the number of people visiting the museum, proving that online can lead to onsite visitors. The national museum, based in Leeds, is free to visit and people can explore thousands of objects of arms and armour, from ancient times to the present day.

Recent data from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport illustrates that between July and September, the Royal Armouries Museum has increased visitors by 62 per cent since pre-pandemic levels in 2019. This bucked the national trend for museum visitors which saw a 14 per cent decrease according to government figures.

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A spokesperson from TikTok said: “Established cultural institutions embraced TikTok to reach new audiences, from empowering Gen Z to write their marketing scripts, as popularised by the UK's Royal Armouries Museum, to collaborating with creators to hone content and even bringing us onto The Met Museum's Met Gala red carpet through Vogue's TikTok LIVE, sparking conversations about historical artifacts, and showcasing the power of creative and innovative marketing.”

Director of brand and audiences at the Royal Armouries, Florence Symington, said: “This is a fantastic achievement for the team, and shows that social media can help to underpin success and drive visitors.

“We’re delighted that TikTok has chosen to showcase us. It’s wonderful that a fun video that brought different generations together to explore our collection with some humour and positivity thrown in has been enjoyed by millions across the world.”