This is a collaborative year long project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, to help museums in the South West identify, make safe, monitor and manage hazardous objects in their collections. To deliver this project we will be working alongside conservation teams at Wiltshire Conservation and Museum Advisory Service (CMAS), Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Bristol Museums, and Hampshire Cultural Trust.
Almost all museums have items in their collections that are hazardous: wartime gas masks and helmets with asbestos, taxidermy specimens preserved with arsenical salts and radioactive items such as minerals, dials and instruments, just to name a few. This project will provide the additional expertise, equipment and investment required for museums to tackle their hazards. Through skills development and investment in equipment it will increase the capacity of the region’s conservation workforce and provide the wider museum workforce, paid and volunteer, with skills, access to both specialist expertise and an equipment bank, and will build confidence.
Aims:
- Raise awareness of the problems museums face with hazards in collections
- Increase confidence and capability of the staff and volunteers from 48 museums for identifying hazards and dealing with them
- Develop and make available templates, resources and an illustrated handbook to help museums deal with hazardous objects safely and effectively
- Support museums with external specialist help
- Provide grants for up to 14 museums to provide further onsite specialist support
- Provide valuable data for museum research, on the variety and frequency of hazards in collections
Timeline:
Summer 2025: Conservators from the four partner organisations and our Conservation Development Officer (CDO) will engage through training with hazards specialists to further develop their expertise in key areas such as managing asbestos, radiation, poisons and medicines.
The conservation team will work alongside our CDO to design a museum sector training programme and assemble kits for the museums, including written guides, Personal Protection Equipment, hazards audit registers, special packaging and safety labels.
Autumn 2025: A full-day training session for 16 museum participants will be held in six venues across the South West area. The training will look at dealing with the most common hazards: arsenic, asbestos, lead, mercury, mould and radiation.
Museums will be helped to set up a Hazard Register, identify the hazardous objects and undertake suitable procedures to make them safe. They will each be given a specialist kit to get them started.
Winter 2025-2026: Each of the 48 museums in the project will be offered one hour of follow-up support by CMAS and our CDO. A number of museums will be offered further in-depth support to deal with more difficult issues.
A second-full day of training will enable eight of the museums to concentrate on more specialist hazards such as controlled drugs, explosives & energetic materials, firearms, kinetic and cellulose nitrate film.
Spring 2026: 14 museums will be eligible to access grants up to £1,450 towards onsite specialist support to enable them to tackle more serious issues and to undertake further remedial work dealing with hazards.
An illustrated practical booklet on dealing with hazards in collections and a short animated training film will be produced to share and reinforce learning. This builds on the success of our previous animation ‘The Museum Life of Pests’ as part of our Pest Partners project.
A Hazards Loan Bank of special testing equipment such as a portable local exhaust ventilation system, Geiger counters and special sealed cartridge HEPA vacuums will be made available to museums free of charge.
Eligibility
This project will provide places for up to 48 museums which meet both of the following criteria:
- Are in the South West Area (South West ONS and Hampshire Solent)
- Have a publicly accessible collection
- Are able to evidence specific needs to address hazards in heritage collections
Whilst organisations do not have to be Accredited or officially Working Towards Accreditation, these museums will be prioritised.
Expression of Interest (EOI) and further information
To hear the latest updates on this project make sure you are signed up to our monthly newsletter.
To submit your EOI on behalf of your museum, you will need to tell us:
- The name and contact details of a senior member of the museum team who has agreed the museum could join this project
- The names and contact details of two main contacts (and one reserve contact) who will join the project
- A brief description of the types of possible hazardous objects you have in your collection and an approximation of the quantity (e.g. we have six WW2 gas masks, a box of uranium mineral ore samples, a large collection of taxidermy animals, five firearms (status unknown), a collection of 1940s electrical appliances).
- A brief description of your current actions to deal with hazardous objects (e.g. the museum has a Hazards Register, the museum lists Hazard as a keyword in the catalogue entry for relevant objects, the museum has lists of objects suspected to be hazardous such as gasmasks, medicine containers, stuffed birds).
Submit your EOI through our Contact Us page, select ‘Projects’ in the drop-down query subject menu.
All EOIs must be submitted by Tuesday 15 July at 9am.
