North Yorkshire town hall and museum to get £1.5m '˜cultural hub' revamp

A North Yorkshire museum and town hall will be redesigned as part of a £1.5m project to bring it into the 21st century.

The three-year project will see Craven Museum and Exhibition Gallery, based in Skipton Town Hall, transformed to become “a cultural hub” for the district.

The money, funded by a National Lottery grant, will be used to overhaul the museum’s dedicated store and research facilities, and launch new education programmes.

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Its collections will also soon be made available on the internet as part of the Stories and Treasures of Street and Dale project, under a new digital cataloguing scheme at the museum and town hall.

Coun Simon Myers, from Craven District Council, said: ”We’re absolutely delighted to have been offered this support thanks to National Lottery players.

“Our plans for the redevelopment of Craven Museum and the historic Town Hall in which it resides will not only enable more of our community and visitors to access the Craven Museum collections, but will include signposting back out across the district to all of the other fantastic heritage attractions and sites of interest, providing a true cultural hub for Craven.”

The project will also include opportunities for volunteers and members of the community to get involved with the museum, and will get them the chance to try artefact ‘digitisation’, undertake research into collections, and providing museum outreach work with organisers.

Craven Museum was first established in 1928 by a group of local collectors.

It moved to the Victorian Skipton Town Hall in the 1970s after an extension was built at the rear to house it.