£5.2m lottery boost to reinvent Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens
Cash windfall will help transform a city’s museum. Tony Henderson reports.
Plans to transform Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens have been boosted by a £5.2m lottery award.
This cash from the National Lottery Heritage Fund will support an estimated £13.1m four-year redevelopment of the museum, plans for which have been shaped by the views of residents and visitors.
Changes will include the relocation of the main entrance into the award-winning Mowbray Park, new exhibition galleries and displays, new touch-down and social spaces, improvements to the Winter Gardens, and external landscape and public realm.
There will also be the creation of a new community learning facility, ‘The Growing Space’, that will complement the community garden adjacent to the Winter Gardens.
Activities will take place in other cultural and community venues across the city once work is underway, while the museum itself is closed to the public for major improvements.
Coun Michael Mordey, leader of Sunderland City Council, said: “This is brilliant news for the city. We last saw major investment in the museum in 2001, also supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
“This new funding is vital to ensuring that our much-loved museum remains at the very heart of family and community life, while also allowing us to improve our collections and make them much more accessible to residents and visitors.”
Coun Beth Jones, cabinet member for communities, culture and tourism at Sunderland City Council, said she was thrilled with the transformative funding award which would “safeguard the building and museum collection” and was also excited about the programme of events and activity which was being planned.
“Plans include everything from pop-up ‘museum on the road’ sessions and people’s memories of Sunderland being collected through a new oral histories project, to work experience and apprenticeship placements, more opportunities for budding young museum curators, and work with young people from schools across the city,” she said.
Nick Malyan, chief executive of Sunderland Culture, the organisation which delivers the creative programme in the museum, said: “The museum is so important to the city as well as being a nationally significant civic museum.
“This support will renew the offer at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens and ensure the venue continues to be at the heart of the city’s life.”
Ivor Crowther, head of investment, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, added: “We know that heritage can play a huge role in bringing people together and creating a sense of pride in local communities, and in turn boosting the local economy.
“The regeneration of this much-loved museum is sure to be a perfect example of that.”