Museum sees 40,000 visitors in year after move

Áine McKenny is the museum's marketing and communications manager

More than 40,000 people have visited the Bradford Peace Museum in the past year, following its relocation from the city centre.

Saturday marks a year since the venue moved to a new site in the Grade II listed Salts Mill in Saltaire, near Shipley.

The museum's highest number of annual visitors when it was formerly based in Piece Hall Yard was 3,000.

Áine McKenny, the site's marketing and communications manager, said the move had given the museum a "whole new lease of life".

Ms McKenny said the museum was now welcoming an average of 250 people a day - compared to just five daily visitors at the old site.

"It's just given the museum a whole new lease of life, to be able to show off more of our amazing 16,000 object collection," she said.

The next exhibition in September will show off the museum's extensive collection of peace badges

A National Lottery heritage grant of about £245,000 and an additional £150,000 from Bradford 2025 City of Culture helped fund the museum's move.

But the increase in visitors has created an unexpected problem, Ms McKenny said.

"More visitors means that more people know about us, so we've had more donation enquiries than we've ever had before," she said.

"We've actually had to pause accessioning new objects into the collection because we've had so many people wanting to trust us with their objects.

"We've had to enrol 12 new collection volunteers specifically for the task, to help us accession those objects into our collection."

The museum has exhibits such as roof tiles salvaged from Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombings, and wire fencing from the Greenham Common peace camp.

The museum moved into a third floor converted room in the Salts Mill building in August 2024

To mark one year since the relocation, the museum plans to hold a "peace picnic" in Roberts Park in Saltaire on Saturday.

The next major exhibition will be in September when the museum's extensive collection of peace pin badges will go on display.

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