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The Art Explora Mobile Museum is a unique truck touring artworks from national collections, on a mission to make great art accessible to everyone, everywhere – across towns, villages and remote locations. It offers a programme of exhibition visits and educational, participatory art workshops for schools and local communities.
For many people in the UK, art galleries and museums remain inaccessible. The factors that contribute to this can be geographic, cultural, economic or physical. Art Explora believes that everyone has the right to experience great art from our national collections. The main barriers for schools are transport costs, staffing and time available for external trips. The Mobile Museum eliminates these barriers and makes great exhibitions hyper-local and accessible to everyone. ​
“I felt like I was really achieving something when one of the school assistants said most of these children won’t have been to a gallery before or even left Hucknall, having the opportunity bought to them really did feel like something special.”
Mobile Museum facilitator, 2024

57%

of schoolchildren had not visited an art museum in the previous year

74%

of teachers say they had not visited a museum with their pupils before

96%

of teachers said that they, and their pupils, learnt something new at the exhibition

30–40

schools visit on each 12 week tour
Each tour, the Art Explora Mobile Museum selects a different area of the country, focusing on areas described by the government as receiving “double disadvantage” – low cultural investment and infrastructure, combined with high levels of socio-economic disadvantage. From the suburbs of big cities to rural towns and villages, the Mobile Museum parks in a central area that is walking distance from local schools and close to public amenities to allow for maximum numbers of passers-by.
“A wonderful experience for the children, even better that it was completely free and within walking distance. The leaders were clearly knowledgeable and were great with the children. They encouraged individual creativity and discussion.”
Teacher, Mobile Museum tour, 2024

New UK truck

The UK’s first permanent Mobile Museum will hit the road next year, bringing world class art exhibitions directly to communities across the country. The custom-built mobile gallery, funded by DCMS, will tour three national collections per year, including the Government Art Collection.

Designed by Ab Rogers Design, this state-of-the-art vehicle will feature expandable gallery spaces and museum-standard environmental controls, enabling it to display artworks from major national collections safely and accessibly. From Spring 2027, it will tour towns, villages and underserved communities across the UK, presenting exhibitions, creative workshops and learning programmes that remove barriers to cultural participation and ensure more people can experience art close to home.
Read more about the UK Mobile Museum
“Thank you so much for making the museum mobile, some of our learners would not be able to travel to a museum due to specific needs so this was life enriching for them.”
Teacher, Mobile Museum tour, 2024

Past programmes

Past programme

Radical Landscapes (2023)

In spring 2023, the Art Explora Mobile Museum delivered its first-ever tour in collaboration with MuMo and Tate, touring around the Liverpool City Region.

Radical Landscapes explored how artists have reimagined the relationship between people, place and power across centuries. The exhibition traced changing perspectives on the landscape, from rural life and industrialisation to migration, protest and the climate crisis. Featuring paintings, photography, sculpture, film and installation, it revealed how landscapes are shaped not only by nature, but by history, identity and activism. Together, these works invited visitors to see the landscape as a site of memory, change and collective action.
Past programme

Soup, Socks, and Spiders! The Art of the Everyday (2024)

Continuing a 2-year partnership with Tate, the Art Explora Mobile Museum toured a specially curated exhibition around communities across Ashfield, Nuneaton, Stoke-on-Trent, Tarporley, Walsall and Wigan in the Midlands.

Soup, Socks and Spiders! Art of the Everyday celebrated the creativity hidden within ordinary objects. Curated from works within Tate’s collection, the exhibition revealed how artists have transformed familiar items, from soup cans and kitchenware to flowers, socks and found objects, into surprising works of art. Spanning modern and contemporary practice, it explored how artists use humour, experimentation and imagination to challenge the way we see the everyday. Visitors were invited to look more closely at the objects that surround them and discover the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary.