In 2015 Buxton Museum and Art Gallery was awarded a £869,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant to deliver Collections in the Landscape. The project brought context and collections together to engage more people with their heritage. Our aims were:
- To improve public access to museum collections through development of virtual resources.
- To improve public access to museum collections through the redevelopment of the principal gallery, Wonders of the Peak.
- Enable schools and researcher to more effectively access and engage with heritage.
- Link collections and knowledge through a network of partnerships and volunteer programmes.
- To develop and share curatorial skills, ethical practice and digital media skills with staff, visitors, non-visitors and volunteers.
To achieve this aims we recreated the Wonders of the Peak which comprised:
- a brand new museum gallery, displaying 10% more objects than its predecessor, using new techniques and technologies (including those in the visitor’s pocket) to make better connections between our collections and the landscapes associated with them.
- www.wondersofthepeak.org.uk – an online hub where the collections of Buxton Museum and our partners can be explored through the context of the landscape.
We also:
- toured a range of events and locations with our Pop-up Museum
- enriched our collections data to share more online
- found new ways to share our collections through blogging and social media
This blog was set-up to follow the development of the project as we both developed, and then delivered the project. It may be updated from time to time – but we now recommend visiting www.wondersofthepeak.org.uk to find out more about the museum, and how we put our collections in the landscape.
Collections in the Landscape 
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