By Joe McCann
MORE than £50m of funding has been confirmed for a major redevelopment of the Ulster Folk Museum with plans to upgrade and transform the site by the end of the decade.
A total of £50.3m has been committed to the project, with £10m coming from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the second largest grant in Northern Ireland’s history after Belfast’s HMS Caroline.
The remaining £40.3m has been guaranteed by the Department for Communities (DfC), with the department acting as guarantor to ensure the project can proceed while the museum also explores additional support from private investors and philanthropists.
The museum first opened in 1964 following the Ulster Folk Museum Act 1958, legislation which set out a clear social purpose to preserve and present ways of life and traditions that were disappearing during a time of rapid social change.
Aaron Ward, Director of Public Engagement at Museums NI, said the museum ‘was unique in the sense that it was specifically founded with a strong social purpose to explore shared heritage and cultural diversity within a society characterised by division’.
Mr Ward said that original purpose had faded from public awareness over time due to adaptations and a lack of major investment, which is why the plans have been named ‘Reawakening the Ulster Folk Museum’.
The plans include creating a new cultural hub and an iconic building at the front of the site designed to display part of the collection on arrival and replace the current ticket kiosk with a more welcoming orientation space.
Plans include a large welcome area with a central hearth installation showcasing items linked to shared heritage, alongside a temporary exhibition space for rotating themes and topics.
There will also be new group engagement spaces for local communities and interest groups including a family craft hall, an adult craft workshop, schools orientation space and facilities to teach skills like foraging, heritage skills, volunteering and apprenticeships.
A second new building will house the museum’s vast industrial collection and include a gallery dedicated to industrial heritage focusing on linen, shipbuilding and rope making and more.
Mr Ward said: “This is a significant new space that will provide that story within the museum and offer people a new way to engage.”
Mr Ward said the museum had a vast collection but the majority of it was currently in storage and had not been displayed for decades. The new investment will allow those items to finally be given a home on display.
He said: “It’s a people’s collection and what I mean by that is there was a lot of work that went on in the 1950s and 1960s with curators travelling across all parts of Ulster – all nine counties of Ulster – to understand that weave of diversity across oral histories, objects, ways of life, customs, traditions, all of these really important things that make us who we are in this part of the world.”
Mr Ward continued, saying they found many people had very fond memories of the museum but they were often linked to a childhood trip or a one-off day out and the new facilities would transform the museum from somewhere you would maybe visit once and not again into somewhere the public would be keen to return to again and again.
The current timeframe for the construction is expected to begin in July 2027, with an estimated launch towards the end of 2029.
