In normal times, Ripon Museums will hold several exhibitions a year across three sites: the Workhouse Museum, Prison & Police Museum and Courthouse Museum. With our buildings closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, we’ve had to find new ways to reach our audiences.

Over the festive period, we partnered with local lighting and audiovisual specialists Fusion LX, who created a seasonal lighting display to appear on the front of the Workhouse Museum. It proved popular with local visitors and we wanted to continue the display in some capacity once the holidays ended.

After exploring how we could create a new lighting display, we decided to team up with the people behind local community project Ripon Re-Viewed, who have preserved and digitised a remarkable collection of photographic images revealing over a century of life in the City of Ripon - the people, places, shops, traditions events and everyday life in our community. Ripon Re-Viewed is a Ripon Civic Society project in partnership with North Yorkshire County Council and has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

With support from Fusion LX, we curated a display of historic photographs to be projected onto the Workhouse Museum, as a new exhibition entitled: Serving Our Community – Images from Ripon’s Past.

The images chosen feature organised groups through Ripon's history: nurses, Civic officials and more, making the point that 'together we are stronger'. The images give an interesting insight into what life was like in Ripon over the last century.

While our doors are closed, the new lighting display gives us a chance to engage the local community with Ripon’s history, reaching people who may not have visited the museums before and who may not be able to access the collection online.

Even with restrictions in place, there are still plenty of fascinating stories to tell and we’re excited to find new ways to tell them.

You can view the exhibition at the Workhouse Museum on Allhallowgate, Ripon, for two hours each evening just after dark. Find out more about Ripon Museums on their website or Facebook page.