Ullapool Museum

12/10/2026

🏆 A fantastic experience at the Kids in Museums Awards! 🏛️✨

Although we didn’t bring home the Best Career Initiative Award, Cara and Neil had a brilliant time representing Ullapool Museum at the awards in Birmingham!

It was a real privilege to be shortlisted alongside so many inspiring organisations doing fantastic work to open up opportunities for young people in museums and heritage. They also had the chance to explore the wonderful Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, making it a trip to remember!

A huge congratulations to Charleston Art Gallery on their well-deserved win! 🎉👏

We’re incredibly proud of our Young Curators’ Club and everything our young people have achieved. From curating their own exhibition to developing new skills, building confidence and discovering the many opportunities within the heritage sector, they continue to show just how much young people can bring to museums.

Being shortlisted is an achievement in itself, and we’re excited to see what our Young Curators get up to next! 💛

HighlandsAndIslands

Museums and Heritage Highland Kids in Museums

09/10/2026

🎖️ National Cadets Week | Skills for Life 🎖️

Did you know that our nationally recognised Young Curators’ Club has its roots in the Army Cadet Force?

💚 From Cadets to Curators, the legacy continues...

Our Director, Siobhán Beatson, spent 10 years with the Army Cadet Force as part of West Lowland Battalion Army Cadet Force. Six of those years were spent as a cadet, reaching the rank of Staff Sergeant and becoming Battalion Drum Major, before spending a further four years as an instructor with D Company and the Scottish National Cadet Force Pipes and Drums.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 One of Siobhán’s proudest moments was becoming the first ever female Senior Drum Major of the Combined Cadet Force Pipe Band in 2005, leading the Beating Retreat at Edinburgh Castle.

But the impact of her time as a cadet went far beyond music, discipline and parade grounds. The experience helped shape her belief in the power of giving young people the opportunity, confidence and support to achieve things they might never have thought possible.

As Siobhán explains:

“I have always been passionate about giving young people agency, advocacy and dignity in their choices. As both a cadet and later an instructor, I saw first hand the positive impact that being given responsibility, support and the opportunity to succeed can have on a young person.

“The Cadet Force teaches so many transferable skills, from leadership, teamwork and communication to resilience, confidence and problem solving. These are skills that stay with you long after your time in uniform ends, opening doors and creating opportunities in all sorts of walks of life.

“I never went on to join the Army, but the ethos of the Army Cadet Force has never left me. It continues to shape the way I work with young people today, and you can see that legacy in our own youth programmes at Ullapool Museum.”

Our Young Curators’ Club is all about giving young people a voice, trusting them to make decisions, and supporting them to develop skills, confidence and experience that will stay with them for life. Whether they go on to a career in museums or take a completely different path, the opportunities they have here are theirs to shape.

Because sometimes, the most important thing you learn in an organisation like the Cadet Force isn't what you do while you're there, but what you go on to do with everything you've learned. 💚

05/10/2026

🍂 October Opening Hours 🍂

As we head into the quieter autumn months, we’re making a small change to our opening hours for October.

From now until the end of October, Ullapool Museum will be open six days a week, Monday to Saturday 11am until 4pm, and closed on Sundays.

Our doors will still be open throughout the week, and we’d love to see you, whether you’re popping in to explore the collections, finding out more about Ullapool’s fascinating history, or picking up something from the museum shop.

Thank you, as always, for supporting your local museum. ❤️

25/09/2026

💙 CURATOR BATTLE! 💙

We’ve been tagged by Glencoe Folk Museum in the Highland , so we had to choose our star object.

And we’ve chosen Sybil Smith’s blue wedding dress.

At first glance, it’s simply a beautiful dress. But look a little closer and it tells us something much bigger.

This was a working-class woman’s wedding dress. Sybil came from Lochs in Lewis and was working as a Herring Girl when she bought the dress in Lowestoft.

Women like Sybil were a huge part of the story of Scotland, travelling the fishing ports, working long hours, earning money and building lives for themselves and their families.

But their stories are so often the ones that disappear.

History can leave us with the grand houses, the important men, the expensive dresses and the big events. The everyday lives of working class women can be much harder to find. Sometimes all we have left is an object like this.

And that’s why we love it.

This dress belonged to someone. Sybil wore it. She chose it. She bought it with money she had earned. She wore it on one of the most important days of her life.

For us, that makes this much more than a wedding dress. It is a tiny piece of evidence of a woman’s life, and a reminder of all the women whose stories might otherwise have been forgotten.

So this is our entry for the Curator Battle. 💙

Arctic Convoy Museum and Cromarty Courthouse Museum we’re throwing the challenge to you, what’s your star object? 👀

18/09/2026

16/09/2026

04/09/2026

🎨 Young Curators with An Talla Solais

We’re incredibly proud of our Young Curators, who were commissioned by An Talla Solais to curate this year’s Ullapool High School Art Week Exhibition at Ullapool Museum.

From selecting and organising the artwork to thinking about how the exhibition would look and feel, the young people brought together lots of different creative ideas and perspectives. Most importantly, they worked brilliantly as a team, listening to one another, sharing ideas and finding solutions together.

It has been fantastic to see them take on the responsibility of curating and art and put all the skills they’ve developed through the Young Curators Club into practice.

A huge well done to everyone involved, we are so proud of what you have created! 👏🎨

Thank you to An Talla Solais for giving our young people this fantastic opportunity and trusting them to take the lead.

Learning Through Action!!

Kids in Museums

21/08/2026

A day out at Highland Archive Centre with ARCH Highland, scanning some rather large maps of the Braemore estate, on temporary loan to us at the museum. 🗺️

A massive thank you to Peter Newling for allowing us to create high-quality digital scans of these fascinating maps, which will be invaluable for our preservation of the local history
This allows the maps to be studied without fear of damage or further wear and tear.

We would also like to Thank ARCH for allowing us to be part of this project. We appreciate the time and effort it has taken to bring this fabulous resource to the Highlands.

There’s nothing quite like getting up close with historic maps — even when they take up the whole room! 😄

20/08/2026

🎨 Young Curators are back!

After the summer holidays, our Young Curators were straight back into action, and we’re off the starting line with a fantastic workshop at An Talla Solais.

The group explored how to choose artwork for an exhibition, different artistic mediums, and the practicalities of displaying and hanging work. All valuable preparation for their first ever commission...curating the artwork from Ullapool High School for display as part of Art Week. 🖼️

It’s another chance for the group to put their ideas into practice while building practical, transferable skills in exhibition planning, decision-making, teamwork, communication and creative problem-solving, the kind of skills that can take them well beyond the museum.

Now onto the exciting bit choosing, creating and curating!

21/07/2026

✨ Big news for our Young Curators Club! ✨

We're absolutely delighted to announce that we've been awarded £11,800 from Museums Galleries Scotland's Small Grants Fund to support the next chapter of our Young Curators Club.

At Ullapool Museum, our Young Curators programme is all about meeting young people where they are. To complement traditional classroom learning, we build projects around their interests while weaving in practical, creative and everyday skills from research, interviewing and storytelling to recording, editing, teamwork and public speaking.

Learning becomes something they do, not just something they're taught.

A huge thank you to Museums Galleries Scotland for supporting this project, and to our brilliant Young Curators, whose enthusiasm, imagination and curiosity continue to inspire us every week.

We can't wait to share the stories and perhaps a few spooky surprises with you! 👀🎧

🎉We’re pleased to announce that £129,584 has been awarded to 12 museum organisations across the country through the latest round of our Small Grants Fund.

From launching a new podcast to upgrading display cases, the awarded projects aim to enhance audience engagement, education, and accessibility.

✨The awarded organisations are:
Art in Healthcare
Islay Museum
The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum
High Life Highland
Bennie Museum
Ullapool Museum
Almond Valley Heritage Centre
Dumfries and Galloway Council
ANGUSalive
University of Dundee
Culture Perth and Kinross
East Ayrshire Leisure

🔗Find out more in our news story: https://www.museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk/news/over-129k-awarded-through-the-small-grants-fund/

📸: Ullapool Museum. Credit: Rob McDougall.