UK's oldest museum sets out plan after £11.6m deal

After the Royal Armouries in Leeds secured an £11.69m government loan to purchase the land it stands on, director Nat Edwards spoke to the BBC about what the deal will mean for the museum.

"We pride ourselves on being the world's oldest museum," Mr Edwards said.

"We've been around since at least the early 14th Century, but for most of our history it was sitting in the Tower of London

"This is the first time in 702 years that we've owned our own home."

The Royal Armouries moved to Leeds from London in the 1990s as the anchor project in a scheme to regenerate what he said was then a "pretty grim, post-industrial" part of the city.

Publicly-owned and free to visit the museum features items from around the world, ranging from Henry VIII's armour to James Bond's Walther PPK.

Mr Edwards, director general and master of the Armouries, said as well as securing a home for the vast array of historical exhibits the deal would also provide a springboard for the museum's future.

He said a major part of their future plans for the site included the development of the tiltyard site, which is used for jousting matches and displays, into a multipurpose riverside arts, events and conference space.

"[We want] to really develop that site into something that can do not just the jousting, but lots of other things too," he said.

The museum is also planning a major refresh of its exhibition galleries, to bring in the latest in of digital technology.

The Royal Armouries principal function is to maintain the national collection of arms and armour.

Mr Edwards said that meant "making it accessible to everybody, for free and forever".

He said the museum had been good at building commercial relationships on the land it currently occupies and has created a major conference and meetings business.

Alongside special exhibitions and its jousting displays, he said these helped to generate income to its work.

In of the wider site the museum has acquired around Leeds Dock, Mr Edwards said they had been approached about "straightforward housing developments".

"We are keen to wider housing development in the south side of Leeds, but we think of the area around the Armouries as such an important public space we are keen to develop it very much with the public in mind."

He said that would include an extended Armouries Square and a multi-purpose building on the tiltyard site with a flexible events space.

They are also looking at creating immersive spaces to help improve the educational experiences they offer to help students learn about life during conflicts.

"Imagine doing that in a space where you can recreate, using immersive technology, a battlefield experience and how much that could bring history to life," he said.

"That goes right through to the kind of work we are doing with the Ministry of Defence to help new recruits into the army better understand the realities of war."

The Royal Armouries also works with the Border Force, the police and various intelligence services, some of which involves training AI systems to detect weapons in suitcase and working with the police to help mitigate the effects of 3D printed weapons.

Mr Edwards said the key to the museum's continuing success was developing these partnerships and creating the spaces and tools to collaborate on telling the story of "hundreds of years of human conflict."

"[It is] a really important story that touches every life and we know we can't tell that story on our own."

He said in the collection, as an example, were items which detail British colonial history in East Africa which, he said, can be displayed and tell a very interesting and educational story.

"But right now in the city we have people who have come from Sudan and have direct, lived experience of religious conflict and civil war and have a completely different perspective of those items."

Mr Edwards said if you put those together you can tell a story which is "10 times more informative, ten times more powerful and has ten times the chance of perhaps helping people avoid conflict in the future.

"That's really what we are about."

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