Worthing Museum & Art Gallery : why it's closed, how it will reopen

But during the closure, the building will also enjoy significant refurbishment plus an important rethinking of the ways it tells the fascinating stories it offers. Once the five months of work have been completed, the team will begin to reinstate the collections, but key to the task will be modernising the displays and updating the interpretations.

Reopening will be sometime this winter. It’s impossible to be more precise than that so early in the process. But in the meantime the team is offering a robust community engagement plan with a full package of workshops, curator talks and the ever-popular archaeology walks. The team are also adapting their schools offer, taking the collections to them while the building is closed.

The reward at the end of it all will be effectively a sparkling new museum, says Amanda O'Reilly, CEO and creative director of Worthing Theatres & Museum. The Heat Network installation has to be done and starts in April. For Amanda and head of museum and exhibitions Gerry Connolly, it’s a case of turning the work into an opportunity for so much else.

“Gerry and I have had aspirations for quite some time to maximise the potential of the museum. The collection is fantastic and there is so much more that we want to be able to display. There are areas that we have been looking to give more space to. But then the Heat Network raised its head. Heating a museum is so complex, and the Heat Network will give us the opportunity to have different zones of heating, different levels of heat in different places. A museum needs a set of controls for heating that is much more complex that other buildings just don't need.

“But the closure came as a bit of a shocker for us. We have nearly 90,000 people troop through the museum every year, and taking the resource away from the community is a real worry. So we spoke to the board of trustees but the message we had was that it had to happen.”

The task therefore became a question of turning it to the museum’s advantage.

“We will have the contractor working on half of the building and we will be working in the other and then halfway through we will swap but the point is that this gives us an opportunity to look at the customer journey through the museum and to elevate the experience. We have a nationally significant dress collection. We have something like 40,000 items but just a small proportion of those can be displayed. We hope that after this we will be able to show so much more. We also hope to reinterpret and redisplay our archaeology. And we're hoping to get more of our fine art on display. It has not really had an identified space until now.

“The Heat Network is being funded by the council and external funding but what we're having to do is collect together as much money as we can to fund the improvements that we want to make, and those improvements will depend on the money that we have got in the pot.”

Worthing Theatres & Museum have already had success with a bid to the Arts Council and are waiting on several more funders. During March, the team is also launching a community funding campaign and hope to raise an additional £30k specifically to improve and replace the museum cabinets. Volunteer help would also be welcome. If a company wants to lend say ten workers for a couple of days that would be great. Similarly if painters and decorators or carpenters are happy to lend their services, Amanda would love to hear from them.

Gerry admits it's both exciting and daunting: “We have had very little time to prepare for this but all of our collection will be remaining in the building because that's the most secure place for it. The curators will be working on site to manage the project, but everything that is in on public display has to be packed and boxed and stored mainly because we will have no control over the temperature in the environment while the museum is closed so we have to really make sure we're protecting our collection. Plus we all know the building well and you know that if you drill in one wall, the whole building shakes!

“The building was a library and a museum and we are starting with the museum side and then we move to the other side halfway through. But really it is a chance to retell the narrative. We want to use this opportunity and we want to offer a more locally based narrative and to really engage with the community.

“The building has not really had that much attention over the years. The building has probably never had an overhaul since it was built. There was some work done in the 1970s when the library moved out to its current site but other than that it has just been tweaks really. But we've always had aspirations for this building. It really is a beautiful building with some amazing architecture. In the 1970s there were some infills that were unfortunate and we will be hoping that some of those will be undone.”

As Amanda says the building has been victim to some ugly carpet tiles and to some strange decisions in the past – and these will be looked at. But she stressed that everyone's favourite items will still be central to the museum once it reopens: “We don't want people coming back into our sparkling new museum and saying ‘But what have you done with such and such?’ We are very conscious that this is the museum of the community and that we hold it for the people of Worthing, and we are very aware of the feedback that we have had.”

And that's another reason to keep the community in touch with all that is happening: “There is a new landing page on the website where people can sign up for updates about all that is happening. There they can see what's happening at the museum and we will also be getting up close and personal with some of the artefacts. The people that truly love the museum will be able to tap into what we are doing.”

The reward at the end of it, quite apart from the heating, will be a museum with ten per cent more of its collections on display and a refreshed space that still highlights all the community favourites.

For the moment, the collections are being safely decanted ahead of the Heat Network installation that starts in April, a sustainable energy project, led by Worthing Borough Council in partnership with Hemiko. As they say, it is a vital step in reducing carbon emissions and supporting Worthing’s Climate Neutral Strategy. From late March-June, Hemiko will be laying new pipe infrastructure under the roads up to the Museum & Art Gallery. The schedule is to switch heat on for the building later this year.

As Amanda says: “The inclusion of Worthing Museum & Art Gallery in the Worthing Heat Network exemplifies how arts and culture can be at the heart of our transition to a sustainable future. By taking this step, we are ensuring that our institution is part of a greener future while continuing to serve as a beacon for creativity and community.”