A new museum in England has given new life to a 300-year-old factory building after an £18 million capital campaign. 

The aptly named Museum of Making is now open and operational inside a repurposed former factory space at the Derwent Valley Mills, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001.

Leeds-based Bauman Lyons has partnered with Derby Museums since 2011 to spearhead a redesign of the historic mill using an innovative hands-on approach that meant working with community members to collaborate on a model for what eventually became the first DIY museum in the country. 

A 2015 ground floor refurbishment left an open space for volunteers to "fit-out" with the help of makers-in-residence, which led to an expanded effort the firm credited to the "maker" movement. 

The Museum, now a Grade II Listed Building, is unique both in terms of its development and for the kinds of services it offers the public. Members have access to a range of technologies and workshops on site, including a co-working space dubbed “The Prospect” that offers welding equipment, CNC machines, and a wealth of other machinery for communal use director Tony Butler says will lead to innovation amongst the area's burgeoning population of designers and skilled tradespeople.

"This is no ordinary museum,” Butler told DerbyshireLive at last week’s opening. “The experience of visiting is designed to encourage people to understand how things are made, think about materials and their uses, [and] have access to skills, knowledge and equipment that might otherwise be unavailable.”

Besides the co-working units, the "co-produced" space now has open storage for its 30,000 object collection, a feature restaurant, retail, and additional gallery space that will play host to its first exhibition, Scale, on view through November 28th.

Derby Museums will continue working with Bauman Lyons on the preleminary redevelopment plans for the Museum & Art Gallery, according to Butler.  

“We don’t ever want it to be finished," he told the Guardian. "It’s a permanent work in progress. It should be something that is continually being made and remade. A place where things are produced.”