Meet the AIM members

AIM’s membership is made up of over 1000 heritage organisations from across the UK and includes some of the country’s smallest museums to the largest visitor attractions. Between them they look after collections, places and stories covering a huge array of subjects and specialisms. The Museum Profiles below will give you a sense of who our members are.

Bradford Police Museum

Bradford Police Museum

The Bradford Police Museum is a small independent museum located in City Hall Bradford. Situated on the original site of a Police Headquarters, built in 1874 and operational until 1974, it includes a Victorian court and cell complex and a collection centred around objects used by the past Bradford Borough and City forces previously displayed in the former Bradford police HQ ‘The Tyrls’. Read more>>

Milton's Cottage

Milton's Cottage

Open to the public since 1887, and based in the Buckinghamshire village of Chalfont St Giles, the Cottage is the place where Milton completed his epic masterpiece Paradise Lost and brought his fictional Satan into being (and with him the first fully realised anti-hero in Western literature). Read more>>

Spalding Gentleman's Society

Spalding Gentleman's Society

Founded in 1710, Spalding Gentlemen’s Society (SGS) is Britain’s oldest provincial learned society and second-oldest museum. From a small coffee-house gathering the SGS quickly grew into a sprawling national and international membership network with a museum, library and archive at its heart. The ‘Original Collection’ of more than 5,000 items survives from the 18th century, largely intact (and in the original cabinets!), in the modern museum. Read more>>

Surgeons' Hall Museums

Surgeons' Hall Museums

Surgeons’ Hall Museums are owned by The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) and consist of the Wohl Pathology Museum, the History of Surgery Museum, The Dental Collection and the Body Voyager galleries. Read more>>

Crab Museum

Crab Museum

Crab Museum is an independent free-to-enter science museum based in Margate. It uses crabs as a lens through which to explore the interconnectedness of life on Earth in all its bizarre, vast, and complicated weirdness. Read more>>

Penmaenmawr Museum

Penmaenmawr Museum

Behind the façade of a former post office in the coastal town of Penmaenmawr in North Wales, is an independent museum bustling with volunteers and community activities. Read more>>

The Devil's Porridge Museum

The Devil's Porridge Museum

The Devil’s Porridge Museum possibly holds the accolade for the best-named museum in the world. It tells the story of HM Factory Gretna, the largest munitions factory on earth during World War One. So where does it get its name from? Click here to find out>>

Armagh Robinson Library

Armagh Robinson Library

Armagh Robinson Library is the oldest public library in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1771 by Richard Robinson, Archbishop of Armagh, and Primate of All Ireland, who wanted to make his collection of books and fine art publicly accessible. Over the years the collections have grown through donations and purchases. Today there are over 45,000 printed works, of which almost half were published before 1800. Read more>>

Newtown Textile Museum

Newtown Textile Museum

The Newtown Textile Museum is housed in an original 1830s hand-loom weaving ‘factory’ in the middle of Wales. An independent Trust took over the museum from the local council in 2016 and the museum features the themes of living and working in the building; the social and industrial history of Newtown in the 1800s; and the story of wool and its journey from fleece to flannel. Read more>>

Foundling Museum

Foundling Museum

The Foundling Museum’s mission is to transform lives through creative action. We tell the story of the Foundling Hospital, which was established in 1739 by the philanthropist Thomas Coram, to care for babies at risk of abandonment. Read more>>

Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books

Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books

Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books, is a registered charity and accredited museum in Newcastle Upon Tyne dedicated to celebrating and protecting Britain’s literary heritage. It shares how children and young people’s books have developed over time and highlights their impact on readers and communities. Read more>>

Museum of Youth Culture

Museum of Youth Culture

Museum of Youth Culture is a non-profit emerging museum dedicated to the scenes, styles and sounds forged by young people over the last 100 years. Currently based on Shaftesbury Avenue in London’s West End, it is devoted to the stories of our formative years and represents over 100 years of social history in Britain told through youth culture. Read more>>

Scottish Crannog Centre

Scottish Crannog Centre

The replica at the heart of the Scottish Crannog Centre was destroyed by fire in June this year. Yet, as Managing Director Mike Benson explains, innovation, strong partnerships, community support and teamwork have laid the foundations for a bright future, recently recognised by winning a Museums Change Lives award. Read more>>

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, based in Cornwall since 1960, explores British magical practice and holds artefacts relating to occult practice, folk magic and magical thought. Read more>>

Dorset Museum

Dorset Museum

Dorset Museum, based in the county town of Dorchester, has just reopened its doors to the public after a £16.4 million redevelopment. The Museum, which holds a collection of around four million objects, has set out to establish itself as a major new cultural destination in the South West attracting more than 100,000 visitors per annum. Read more>>

Dr Jenner's House

Dr Jenner's House

General manager Owen Gower introduces the fascinating museum which preserves the birthplace of vaccination. Read more>>

The Bowes Museum

The Bowes Museum

Purpose built in the style of a French château, The Bowes Museum is in the historic market town of Barnard Castle. With the North of England’s most important collection of European fine and decorative arts and the UK’s largest collection of Spanish paintings outside London or Edinburgh, as well as an internationally acclaimed exhibition programme and over 100 events a year, more than 100,000 people annually visited the Museum pre-pandemic. Read more>>

Nantgarw China Works & Museum

Nantgarw China Works & Museum

Nantgarw porcelain, developed at the start of the 19th century by William Billingsley is revered as the finest porcelain made in the UK and among the finest in the world. Today the original site houses Nantgarw China Works & Museum, an independent museum run by a charitable trust, which also operates as a pottery, arts centre and educational resource for the local community. Read more>>

Black Cultural Archives

Black Cultural Archives

Black Cultural Archives (BCA) in Brixton is the home of Black British History. Our mission is to collect, preserve and celebrate the histories of people of African and Caribbean descent in the UK and to inspire and give strength to individuals, communities and society. Our founders felt there needed to be a space where they could go and see positive representations of themselves. Originating as a community archive, Black Cultural Archives now contains 50 sq meters of archival material across two sites. At Black Cultural Archives visitors can do research, view exhibitions and come to events. Read more>>

The Cromwell Museum

The Cromwell Museum

The Cromwell Museum is a contradiction; it’s one of the smallest museums in the UK (our gallery space is currently a single room just 70 metres square) but has internationally important collections, including iconic paintings by some of the greatest artists of the mid-17th century and unique personal items. It tells the story of a single figure – the 17th century soldier and statesman Oliver Cromwell – but against the tumultuous times through which he lived. Read more>>

Florence Nightingale Museum

Florence Nightingale Museum

With the high-profile implementation of NHS Nightingale hospitals across the country, it is doubtful whether anyone in the UK has now not heard of the Victorian woman who is arguably the world’s most famous nurse, but did you know there is a Florence Nightingale Museum? The museum is an independent charity, operating as a tenant at St Thomas’ Hospital, on the site of Nightingale’s first nursing school. Read more>>