Rochdale’s Pioneers Museum to be redeveloped in time for the UN Year of Cooperatives in 2012

The donation given to the Co-operative Heritage Trust will modernise the Toad Lane complex which will be transformed and updated, creating new visitor facilities and learning spaces. New displays will be designed incorporating images and objects from the National Co-operative Archive, while specialist staff will be recruited to teach schools, colleges and the local community about the Co-operative Movement using the archive and museum materials.

Collections from the archive will also be available for public viewing for the first time including some papers and books of Robert Owen — one of the first people to incorporate co-operative principles into the workplace — as well as material charting the history of the modern-day Co-operative Group and Co-operatives UK.

Dame Pauline Green, President of the International Co-operative Alliance and one of the Co-operative Heritage Trust trustees, said: “The new project will ensure Toad Lane will be ready to be a launch pad for 2012 as the UN’s International Year of Co-operatives.”

At the end of August the museum will close for the 16-month facelift — the provisional opening date is set to be December 21st 2011, which is 167 years after the opening of 31 Toad Lane as the Rochdale Pioneers’ first co-operative store.

To meet the full cost of project, which has been in development for the past seven years, the trustees of the museum are looking at a fundraising scheme. Details of the fund are due to be announced soon, which needs to raise the difference between the £1.5m Lottery funding and total cost of the works estimated to be £2.3m.