> museum(s) — with free entry no less
The tax paying public aren't going to pay for that.
The existing collections can just about barely justify free entry. Most museums have a vast secondary collection that's not on display already. These items are going in a warehouse because there isn't enough money to do archaeology on them any time soon, let alone prep them for display.
Or do what the V&A has done in Docklands - make its warehouse available for the public to visit. Pretty cool day out.
https://www.vam.ac.uk/east/storehouse/visit
Second that, it's really good. You can only really see a small fraction of it still, just because of the nature of it (it's like a central viewing space completely surrounded by warehouse shelving) but really interesting, from the meta perspective of seeing how they store and tend to pieces too.
For example, there's a bunch of swords 'on display' (such as it is) and then you can sort of just about see an entire sword storage/curation room off to one side, with many times more than are actually visible in some detail.
Science Museum opens its warehouse in Swindon to the public too
Highly recommended for people with an interest in vehicles, but there's a lot of other stuff from twentieth century consumer goods to the contents of Stephen Hawkings office on shelves there and document archives too.
London already has free museums and galleries fyi
London has loads of exceptional museums that are completely free. If you ever have the chance to visit the city, do try to take advantage!
Entry to the main/permanent collections is free, but there are usually one or more special exhibitions at each museum that are paid entry.
Sadly we’re in the era where everything has a price but nothing is valued.