Historic collections from a West Devon town are going on tour to reach a wider audience.

Tavistock Museum is going out to the people as part of its new outreach project.

The so-called ‘mobile museum’ was devised and created in response to a partial enforced shutdown, until repair work to a major structural failure at the old building in Bedford Square has been completed.

However, the museum trustees have seized the setback as an opportunity and are keen to use the mobile museum to spread the message of how important the town’s heritage is and to engage with new and different audiences than people who would more typically visit a static museum.

The museum has just been awarded a £2,470 grant by Tavistock Town Council towards the mobile museum — a vote of confidence in the project which has already been exhibiting in Tavistock Library.

The mobile museum allows existing exhibits from the collections under different themes to be taken to different locations open to the public.

Tony Rose, chairman of the museum’s trustees, said: ‘We’re very pleased to receive this generous grant from the council. It will support the mobile museum by enabling us to buy lockable cabinets and display boards. The cabinets will let us display items from the museum’s existing collections with the knowledge they will be safe and secure in other locations.

‘We want people to know that we are still operating and will still be open from Wednesday, April the fifth, at our site in the historic old Court Gate. But we also want to tell people we’ll be more visible, taking the mobile museum out to them, rather than always expecting them to come to us. We’ve had to close during the pandemic, then the damp problems followed, meaning a large area is temporarily closed while the resulting structural problems are sorted out.

‘There are, however, really good reasons and benefits from having a mobile museum. We hope to show our exhibits to people who wouldn’t normally come to a museum because we’re in places where they are anyway, like the library. The mobile exhibits are also themed in a more accessible in that way, with a specific subject to look, which is different to a lot of collections all at one time.’

The library has hosted a mobile exhibition on clothing rationing in WW2, with the next one in the summer holiday about historic buses. The final mobile display of the year is planned to be about crime and punishment. There is also an aspiration to tour schools. New exhibitions this year in the permanent museum are Toll Roads and Toll Houses, The Wilminstone Quarry Locomotives, Victorian Photographs of Tavistock and Dolvin Road, Tavistock.

The museum is run and staffed by volunteers. Applicants are invited to fill the role of treasurer. Anyone interested is asked to contact [email protected]