Leeds City Museum

[ps60]

HISTORY IN THE MAKING AS NEW £26.9M MUSEUM PROJECT BEGINS

September 22nd, 2005

Work is set to start this week on the new £26.9m Leeds City Museum and discovery centre.

The project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Leeds City Council, the Single Regeneration Budget and Yorkshire Forward will see the Grade II-listed Civic Institute building off Millennium Square transformed into a state-of-the-art museum, while a purpose-built discovery centre is also being created near Clarence Dock.

Due to open in 2008, the new Leeds City Museum will feature four floors of exhibitions and a large central arena. The exhibitions will include “Ancient Worlds” – looking at life and death in ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt, and the “Natural Sciences” Gallery which will explore the variety of life on our planet and in Leeds, examining the environmental issues confronting us today.

The “Treasures” Gallery will explore what makes objects valuable and why people collect them, while the “World View” Gallery will initially focus on Africa and its culture. In addition, an entire floor will be devoted to the history of Leeds and its people from the earliest times to the present day.

The exhibits will feature interactive elements to challenge and interest budding archeologists of all ages, as well as showing well-loved objects such as the full-size Giant Irish Elk, the Leeds Tiger and the legendary Egyptian Mummy which dates back 3000 years.

A focal point of the museum will be the Central Arena, which will have moving film shown from big screens suspended from the ceiling. One of the main attractions will be a stunning large-scale map of the city on the floor, which will enable Leeds residents to literally walk on their house!

Leeds City Council Executive Member for Leisure Councillor John Procter said: “The new Leeds City Museum and discovery centre are going to provide us with some of the finest museum facilities to be found anywhere in the country.

“It is a highly exciting project and the plans for how both buildings are going to look are fantastic. These are going to be wonderful, educational attractions for people to come and visit, and the people of Leeds will be very proud of these great new facilities for generations to come.”

In addition to the featured areas, the new museum will also have added space in which to host touring national exhibitions or community exhibitions, while balconies on the first floor will enable visitors to look down on the Central Arena. Other facilities will include a café and spaces for education or holding conferences.

The discovery centre near Clarence Dock will house the bulk of the Leeds collection, which consists of thousands of remarkable pieces. The new development will mean that museum objects that have been hidden away since the 1940s due to a lack of exhibition space will once again be on public display.

Due to open in early 2007, the discovery centre will have more of an emphasis on research and education than the main museum, with a wide range of collections to see from the fields of natural sciences, archeology, anthropology and human history.

Publicly accessible by prior booking, the new discovery centre will be ideal for educational visits, students conducting research and specialist study groups.

Entry to both buildings will be free of charge, with the aim being to attract families and individuals of all ages and backgrounds from Leeds as well as community groups and tourists.

As part of the biggest Heritage Lottery Fund award of its kind in Yorkshire (£19.5m), a large-scale public consultation process was carried out throughout the city to find out what people wanted to see in the new facilities. This was conducted in supermarkets, libraries, schools, seminars, focus groups and special interest groups as well as questioning Leedscard readers to find out their views, with the findings playing an integral part in the final plans for the project.

Heritage Lottery Fund Regional Manager for Yorkshire and Humber Fiona Spiers said: "This is an exciting moment for the city - the beginning of work for the creation of an innovative and much-needed museum plus a complementary discovery centre. "This is the Heritage Lottery Fund’s biggest grant ever to the region - an amazing £19.5million - and we are confident that this new museum will help develop the city's Cultural Quarter, making it a centre for economic and social regeneration."

[Rob]

This is excellant news, we've waited years for this museum to get started. The old one was quite good in pleasant but cramped surroundings. This new development sounds like a top class museum, to add to our Royal Armouries and Medical museums (and Abbey House, Armley Mills and Thwaites Mill museums and art gallery.)

[Skopie]

All we need now is a descent modern art museum, do you think they want to open a British branch of The Guggenheim

[Leeds No.1]

To be honest, I'm sure they would if they had the money. But I bet if they did it would be in London, or the surrounding area...

[Smoggie_Si]

Originally Posted by Leeds No.1

To be honest, I'm sure they would if they had the money. But I bet if they did it would be in London, or the surrounding area...

I'm not sure that it would. They chose Bilbao for the Spanish Guggenheim afterall.

[Leeds No.1]

yeah but in this country things seemed to be biased towards the south, london particularly, something that doesn't quite follow in Spain.

[EarlyBird]

This looks like quite an impressive project. For comparison's sake, the Imperial War Museum North cost £28.5 million, so you should come out with a stunning museum at the end of this.

[Fred2]

Originally Posted by Leeds No.1

yeah but in this country things seemed to be biased towards the south, london particularly, something that doesn't quite follow in Spain.

Yes look what a fuss was made by London based pundits when the move to Leeds of the Royal Armouries took place !

[ps60]

Originally Posted by Fred2

Yes look what a fuss was made by London based pundits when the move to Leeds of the Royal Armouries took place !

True. A fair number of Southerners think they should have absolutely everything down there, and we should have nothing up here - that the North should be some forgotten backwater. The Leeds Supertram seems to be a classic example of that - this almost certainly gets rejected, whilst London gets the Olympics with £12 billion spent there on facilities - the stadium and its transport links, plus the £10 billion Crossrail project. And of course there is the £4 billion Terminal 5 project at Heathrow Airport, the £5 billion Channel Tunnel Rail Link (which probably won't mean Eurostars linking Paris or Brussels to Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow etc). Need I go on?

[ps60]

Originally Posted by Leeds No.1

yeah but in this country things seemed to be biased towards the south, london particularly, something that doesn't quite follow in Spain.

Britain seems to be the only country in the world where everything gravitates to just one region.

[Fred2]

Originally Posted by ps60

Britain seems to be the only country in the world where everything gravitates to just one region.

I reckon France must be a close second.

[Leeds No.1]

Yeah but other regions get money to. I was in Grenoble earlier in the year where they are building the 3rd extension of the tram network, pretty self explanitory.

[ps60]

Originally Posted by Fred2

I reckon France must be a close second.

Several of its cities have tram networks - Strasbourg, Lille, Grenoble, Montpellier etc, not to mention high speed LGV lines that are completed (Paris-Lille-Calais-Brussels, Paris-Le Mans, Paris-Lyon-Marseille), under construction (Paris-Strasbourg), and projected (Paris-Bordeaux, Barcelona,Turin and Milan). However, the CTRL under construction from the Channel Tunnel to London is effectively part of a LGV Paris-London high speed line, with only 69 miles of it in the UK.

[Jebus]

Found these

[Leeds No.1]

I think itll be good when its finished; theres alot of stuff to go in.

[LeedsLad]

The circular centre looks like a waste of space - huge area but the only exhibits are a few pictures...

[Alphie]

Totally agree. A load big pictures really isn't good enough for a 21st century museum, especially in such a potentially brilliant space. If this is the centrepiece of the museum, I dread to think what the rest of it will be like.

Having said all that, I guess we should wait to see it for real before making too many judgements!

[Jonaldo]

I used to go to the college of music when it was based up there and even did a spot of sound engineering on the side in the auditorium part of the civic Institute and I seem to recall it being a fairly decent size. Certainly alot bigger than the animation suggests (unless those people are giants).

[di Livio]

The renders are only conceptual.
I hope Stephen Burt and Kevin Grady are appointed to write the museum's text.

[Val Verde]

Certainly looks better than the existing museum how much space would there be for exhibits and would there be space for temporary installations and am I guessing that it would have free entry like many other museums like the National Media Museum and Royal Armouries? Also what is to happen to the old museum (which I confess I haven't been to since about 1992) is that to become an extension to the art gallery or library or is something else going there? Finally are there any plans to try and encourage any more tourist attractions into Leeds?