Beamish hopes to open archive to public next year
BBCA museum's archives may be reopened to the public in late 2026.
Beamish Museum in County Durham holds more than 2.5 million items which showcase the lives of people from north-east England.
But the open-air museum, which highlights the region's history from the 1820s to the 1950s, only currently displays a "relatively small proportion" of its collection – the majority of which has been donated by local people, according to Beamish official Helen Barker.
"People have donated these objects to help us make the museum and I think we have a responsibility to make them available for people to come and see," she said.
Beamish's collections and programmes executive director Ms Barker said parts of the site's archives had previously been accessible to the public before the pandemic.
"We knew it was really popular with visitors so we kind of always thought we would try get it reopened again," she said.
Now the team is working towards reopening parts of the archive to the public and hope to do so in about a year's time.
Ms Barker said the archive was a "unique snapshot" of working class life in the region.
She said the museum had in some ways been "curated" by the public.
"They have decided what's important and what they want to donate," she said.
Ms Barker said it was important to reopen its archive to the public because there was little point in having objects that could not be seen.
"We need to make as much of the collections accessible," she said.
"It helps us understand who we are and where we are in the world."
