National Football Museum – The Future
The official news release circulated today from National Football Museum follows :
National Football Museum enters into Manchester partnership
The trustees of the National Football Museum today resolved in principle to enter into a partnership with Manchester City Council, which will see the Museum open at the Urbis building in Manchester.
This partnership will guarantee the long term future of this national museum in the North West and an exciting new public face of the Museum will open in the Urbis building in Manchester in 2011. The Museum will be a major new visitor attraction for the City and will open up the collection to a much wider audience.
While an exciting new National Football Museum will be developed at Urbis, there is an opportunity to continue to maintain the publicly accessible museum at Preston. The current exhibitions could remain open to the public until Preston Guild in 2012 and beyond, if funding was secured.The Board of Trustees said: ‘The trustees resolved in principle to establish the National Football Museum at Urbis in Manchester, subject to receiving assurances on certain potential liabilities. In the meantime we re-affirm our desire to maintain the publicly accessible museum at Preston and will enter into further discussions with the Lancashire County Council Consortium to achieve this aim’.
The Museum will in addition retain its research partnership with UCLAN, the International Football Institute (IFI), which means that Preston will remain a major centre for football research, attracting visiting academics and other researchers from around the world. Paul Dermody, Chairman of the National Football Museum said: “We are delighted that the partnership with Manchester City Council will ensure an exciting future for the Museum. We also hope that further discussions with Lancashire County Council, Preston City Council and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) will see this national treasure remain open in Preston into the future. Importantly, the Museum’s future in the North West has been secured. We firmly believe this is a win-win situation’.
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