Curation and Loans

The Scottish Football Museum is an Accredited museum with a Nationally Significant collection.

We have policies in place which guide collecting and disposal (when necessary).

We mainly collect by donation - however, we may purchase an object if it is of significant interest to the museum. It is also possible to leave an item to the museum as a legacy gift in your will.

Once an object has been accepted into the collection, ownership will be legally transferred to the Scottish Football Museum. The object will then be cared for according to recognised museum standards.

We collect objects relevant to Scottish Football and we are always interested in acquiring items relating to the following:

• Scotland's national football teams
• Scotland’s senior clubs, Scottish junior/non-league football and Scottish amateur football
• Women’s football in Scotland
• Youth football in Scotland
• Scottish football origins
• Football and the media
• Football and social history
• Football and commercialism
• Fan culture
• Football games and hobbies
• Stadium architecture in Scotland
• Football and the Scottish diaspora

If you would like to offer an object to the museum, please email us with as much information as possible at collections@scottishfootballmuseum.org.uk and a member of the Collections team will get in touch to discuss this with you.

Due to demands on space, we typically only accept objects on loan for Exhibitions and Special Displays. However, we may accept loans outside of these circumstances if the object/s is/are of particular interest to the museum.

Please note we have a vast collection and thus it is not possible for all our objects to be on display at the same time. Objects which are not on display may be made available for viewing by prior appointment.

Occasionally, objects which do not meet our collections policy may be of interest to us for our education or reminiscence programmes. In this instance, we will contact you to ask if you are happy for your object(s) to be used for these purposes. Items donated to these programmes provide a fantastic resource for schools, care homes and other community groups.

We can also offer advice on storage and preventive conservation for relevant items. However, we are unable to provide a valuation service.