Over five years CHI has promoted and supported the development of the collections for use by members of the public, young people, and natural history groups. The natural history collections, managed by the Environment and Heritage Service, are a valuable resource that remains underused by community and recorder groups at present. They can be used for identification training and by groups looking at collections for identifying species they have found.

CHI has promoted the use of the natural history collections held at the Barrow Collections Resources Centre by members of the public, young people, creative writing and drawing groups, as well as natural history societies. The collections are a unique way of illustrating the diversity of the natural world and are an excellent education resource, providing inspiration.

CHI has funded local experts to enhance display and interpretation of the collections. Projects completed on developing the collections at Barrow have included:·travelling education trays, showing bumblebee collections, ladybirds, mosses, lichens, garden insects, and pond life. These were developed to be used for training and outreach events.

A bone collection was purchased with the help of CHI which includes skeletons of mammals and birds. These have been used at youth events including the Holly Hayes Wildlife Watch Group with children aged 6-14 years, and a bat talk at Diseworth primary school. Adults utilised specimens at Behind the Scenes and Creative Nature poetry sessions in 2006 and 2007.

A selection of training boxes were developed featuring mosses, lichens, and insects. These will also be used to improve the potential for outreach and training.

As an additional development with work with societies and also increased opportunities to work with museum collections the CHI team developed Touring Collection Cases, similar to those developed by the Open Museum Team.  This was piloted as part of the wider Butterfly Bounty project. Interest in the initial Butterfly Bounty travelling case encouraged CHI to develop more travelling cases that linked to project work or work on the collections. These included: bats, ladybirds, birds and wildflowers.