Meet historian Dr John Tanner as he guides a 'masterplan' for Yorkshire's National Coal Mining Museum

Wakefield's National Coal Mining Museum for England has appointed a new 'head of masterplan' in one of the region's best-known heritage figures – historian Dr John Tanner, who is known for guiding major projects with Barnsley Museums and Elsecar village.

To Dr Tanner this is a role to realise potential, for a museum with a global reach: "The museum is an absolutely fantastic place, and people absolutely love it. At the same time, it has lots of potential for the future as well.

"This is to realise that potential, for the stories at its heart, and to share the fantastic treasures and art that it has, making sure that we can inspire for the future."

Dr Tanner is an experienced heritage project manager, having led the creation of Experience Barnsley Museum & Discovery Centre, in the running for Museum of the Year in 2021. At Elsecar village he also helped guide development and a boom in visitor numbers, with a £25m masterplan to establish a 21st century railway at the ironworks.

His appointment comes at an "exciting period of change" for the National Coal Mining Museum, as it looks to opportunities to develop the site and share its stories.

Dr Tanner, stressing he's not quite in post yet, has shared some of his vision. Partly, it's about bringing vibrant ideas to life, from expert volunteers or the coal mining veterans who lead guided tours, he said, using tech to be more immersive. Celebrating stories of bravery, and camaraderie, or incredible advances in engineering feats.

Then it's about partnerships and other museums - celebrating Durham or Somerset's mining stories or linking with the Science Museum in London or York's National Railway Museum. It's about "seizing opportunity", he said, to tell stories in a wider way.

"This is a place that people can come to, to discover their own stories, no matter what part of England they're from," he added. "Sharing that is going to be very special."

Coal mining is in Dr Tanner's blood, with his own grandfather only retiring in 1983. He can trace his direct ancestry back in industry for at least the past century, while his three-times great-grandfather was one of those injured at a mining disaster at Universal Colliery which killed 81 miners in 1901.

"It's something I'm very proud of, in terms of that history," said Dr Tanner. "There is an important responsibility, as to how we share that story of coal mining; of the miners themselves, the communities shaped by mining, and how we inspire future generations.

"This story is incredibly relevant and important today, almost more so than ever before.”