The city’s two museum trusts Museums Sheffield and Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust will be merging into one trust from April this year.
New plans backed by the council will also look to provide free entry to all sites in the region.
Their sites include: The Millennium Gallery, Weston Park Museum, and Graves Gallery (Museums Sheffield) and Kelham Island Museum, Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet and Shepherd (SIMT).
Councillor Mary Lea, Cabinet Member for Culture, Parks and Leisure, has said: “Museums Sheffield and Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust are custodians of the Sheffield Collection – the artefacts, art, and objects which are owned by the City Council on behalf of the people of Sheffield.
“We warmly support the creation of the new united Museums Trust for the city, which brings together this whole sweep of industry, society, and the arts, to preserve and interpret the past and to inspire and inform the future.
“We will continue to work closely with the new Trust and to support this important new development in the city’s rich and diverse cultural life.”
A council report following the approval of the new plans, stated that benefits included: a more sustainable and efficient organisation with complementary expertise, more opportunities for staff, a higher profile for museums and heritage in the city, consistency across all sites and better opportunities to display more artefacts in more imaginative ways.
The new Trust may also be able to obtain larger sums of Arts Council funding due to its new status as a combined organisation, a bid to they plan to put to Arts Council England to establishing service principles, market research, and new signage.
The new trust also aims to, by the end of the first year, implement a masterplan for the next decade, a new website, a summer launch programme, a team induction programme, and a race-inclusion action plan.