The Peace Museum reopens in new site
The Peace Museum has re-opened in a new site after four years
The Peace Museum in Bradford has reopened at a new site, four years after it closed at the start of the Covid lockdown.
Its new location in Salts Mill, in Saltaire, includes a new permanent exhibition, a temporary exhibition gallery, an education space, research facilities, and a shop.
Quakers were among the supporters who celebrated its reopening on 10 August.
Charlotte Houlahan, curator at the museum, said the new location is triple the size of the old. ‘It’s very exciting after four years of closure to have people coming back to see all these amazing objects finally on display.
‘Although [the old site] was a central location, it was behind a door, you had to buzz to get in, go up sixty steps, no lifts, so it was inaccessible.’
She said all the museum’s objects had to be moved by hand in cardboard boxes from the old site. The museum’s 16,000 artefacts include the original sketch of the CND peace symbol from 1958, designed by Gerald Holtom.
The museum’s move coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Bradford’s department of Peace Studies this year. Prathivadi Anand, a professor from the department and a trustee of the museum, said its new location was ‘an important event’ for the university and the city of Bradford. ‘If the founding of the department of Peace Studies at the university in 1973 has been a uniquely important event for the academic advancement of understanding and thinking about peace, the development of The Peace Museum in Bradford a couple of decades later has been important to advance public understanding of peace and the important roles of arts, literature, protests and public or collective action for peace.’
Founded in 1994, the museum didn’t open until 1998 and is the only UK museum dedicated to peace.
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