Suffolk Museum of the Year Award 2015 Entry
Please return your entry to ruth.gillan@ntlworld.com by May 21st. The Awards are open to all accredited
AfSM member museums (and any who are actively seeking accreditation). Remember that as well as the
overall winner, there are awards for special achievement and for community education and
engagement. An accompanying good quality, up to date, attractive / lively photograph(s) of your
museum would be welcome – sent as separate jpeg attachment(s) please.
1) Current Information:
Museum name and address:
Telephone number:
Website:
Opening times:
Admission charges:
Museum of East Anglian Life, Crowe Street, Stowmarket, Suffolk, IP14 1DL
01449 612229
www.eastanglianlife.org.uk
Tue-Sat: 10-16:30, Sun 11-16:30
Adult £7.50, Concession £6.50, Child £4.25, 2 adult family £20,
1 adult family £14.
2) Background Information: (an honest approximation is sufficient)
Annual visitor numbers:
Number of hours you are open annually:
Number of staff and/or volunteers:
40,000
10,800
12 staff and 200 volunteers
3) Overview and description of your museum (If it makes things easier, cut and paste from your website
(or last year’s entry) 200 words is plenty.)
Founded in 1967 our core purpose is to share the compelling story of East Anglian lives through historic
buildings, collections and landscape. Our vision is ‘People Grow with us through History’.
Based in a 75 acre site in the heart of Suffolk we have around 40,000 visitors a year, maintain an impressive
range of 20 historic buildings including Alton Water Mill with its house and cart lodge, Grundisburgh
Blacksmiths forge, a tin chapel and many others relating to local industries, and hold over 30,000 artefacts
from the region’s history. Our site is important as a maintained green space in the centre of Stowmarket, a
large Suffolk town with over 19,000 residents and, as well as the historic walled garden, includes an
environmentally important wet meadow and 3 sites of Special Scientific Interest contained within our river
walk. We are also able to support a number of historic breeds such as the Large Black pig, Suffolk Punch
horse, Red Poll cattle and Suffolk sheep, which are important to our farming heritage.
We are the only UK museum to hold the Social Enterprise Mark and we aim to enrich people’s lives,
encouraging enjoyment, learning and participation through our public programmes, training and
volunteering schemes.
The Museum is a space for people to be active, learn new things, look at the world differently, make
friends and give something back.
4) What makes your museum special? (As well as your collections, think about your volunteers, visitor
services, events, exhibitions, the work you do with/for your local community, family visitors, schools etc.
Don’t forget to highlight any new developments and initiatives for 2015. Use bullet points if you wish.)
We try new things:
The museum is very successful and in recent years has enjoyed significant expansion and development.
The opening of Abbot’s Hall a Queen Anne House; its historic walled garden and Crowe Street Worker’s
Cottages to the public in 2012, following a major refurbishment programme, marks a major addition to the
quality and range of our services. This extra exhibition space has, using the theme of home and belonging,
enabled us to tell the story of George Ewart Evans, a pioneer of oral social history in Britain who believed
that ‘the main components of history are not things but people’ as he lived and worked in Blaxhall, Suffolk.
The space also highlights less well known elements of the social history of the region, recreating the story
of a mental health hospital, and the long contribution of Gypsy Travellers.
The extra exhibition space has also increased our ability to house temporary exhibitions, which in 2014
included:
‘An Anecdotal Eye’: the work of Thomas Bewick;
‘Escape to the Country’: the East Anglian ‘Good Life’ of the 1970’s (successfully co-curated by the
community);
‘Everybody’s Darling’: the First World War Nurse and ‘A Vintage Christmas’.
In 2015 our temporary exhibitions include:
“Calm During the Storm: Wartime and Embroidery” (17 Jan - 28 June 2015) Using both historical and
contemporary pieces, this poignant and timely new exhibition from the Embroiderers Guild portrays the
role of needlework, especially embroidery, as a calming influence in troubled times and links it to personal
experiences.
Edgelands (18 July - 31 March 2016) a photographic exhibition by Tom Owens, exploring the buffer zones
where the urban meets the countryside.
Tom Owens is fascinated by light, colour and his surroundings, and the official labelling of designated areas
of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) has made him question what is beautiful in the countryside. The
initial Edgelands series was exhibited in Ipswich and London with Owens’ book of the series shortlisted in
the Royal Photographic Society's inaugural Photobook exhibition.
We also have a community cabinet, which enables a series of exhibitions coproduced with local community
groups. The cabinet is currently showing items from the WI in celebration of 100 years of the WI and
enhances the temporary exhibition which includes a number of WI needlework pieces.
The historic walled garden attached to Abbot’s Hall is a wonderful place to visit and free to enter. Using
photos and records of the walled garden, it has been replanted with traditional plants and traditional
gardening methods and visitors have enjoyed seeing it develop and reach its potential; a potential that will
be acknowledged nationally in July 2015, as it has been accepted into the National Gardens Scheme. We
are proud of this success because it recognises the work of the supported volunteers who work in the
garden. We have over 17 supported volunteers who, as well as contributing to the development of the
garden, have built their confidence, so that 4 attended training courses in 2014 and 10 volunteers peer
support new volunteers. The team also sell produce grown in the garden and helped the Museum win a
gold award for the Environment at the Stowmarket Town Council awards 2014.
Over 2000 children and their teachers visit us each year, we run a successful community drop in for preschool children and run programmes for SEN and excluded children too. This year, working in partnership
with local schools and home educators we are extending our learning programme and will be piloting a
new arts educational project called ARTefacts. The project will run throughout 2015 and will inspire
children to learn about their heritage through hands on learning experiences and get an Arts award
qualification.
We work with offenders and provide training and skills development opportunities to people who want to
get back into work, begin or change their career. We have a strong record of partnership working within
the region and have been partners with Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse, a major museum within Norfolk
Museums Service, for the past five years to deliver the Heritage Lottery Funded Skills for the Future
programme. This has provided training and secondment opportunities for 80 trainees and apprentices,
over 76% of whom have gone on to employment within the heritage sector. Building upon this successful
programme which ended in April 2015 we have launched ‘Work to Achieve’. This is a 12 month programme
funded by New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, in which we run three 12 week training programmes
for young people and the long term unemployed, supporting participants back into work. Our first
programme, which began in February, has already successfully supported 5 people back into work and our
second programme starts in June.
Our events programme has something for everyone with an annual Blues Festival, a Beer Festival, Steam
and Crafts fair, traditional Christmas fair and Fireworks event. We also run an annual Traditional Music
Festival in partnership with the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust. We continue to expand our events
programme, in 2014 we joined the Stowmarket Christmas tree festival and in 2015 we have added Traction
‘15; a volunteer led event with working machines.
Our staff and volunteers
The Museum is only here today because of our fantastic staff and volunteers. 2014 was a difficult year
financially and, with no cash reserves, the Museum has had to cut staffing capacity to a minimum and staff
went to a 4 day working week from November 2014. Despite shoe string budgets and a reduced wage, the
staff team has stepped up and continues to work hard invigorating the Museum with new ideas and
projects that respond to the needs of the local community and visitor base.
Finally the support provided by regular volunteers to the running of the Museum cannot be too highly
praised. From researchers to printers to the Steam team, who led our recent Traction ‘15 event and the
Mill team, who lead on our Alton Watermill, our volunteers are all Museum heroes.
Recent Awards
The success of the Museum has been recognised in a number of recent awards:
 Suffolk Museums Special Award for Innovation 2012
 Highly Commended in Visit England’s Small Visitor Attraction of the Year 2014
 Pride of Stowmarket Award in Town Council Awards September 2014
 Working Together Award, Suffolk Commmunity Foundation October 2014
 Business Contribution to the Community Award, Mid Suffolk District Council 2015
5) Contact details (for whoever will be assuming responsibility for your Award entry. This needs to be
someone who will be easy to reach throughout the process as they will be first point of contact for Ruth
and the press as well as for BBC Radio Suffolk’s Lesley Dolphin.)
Name:
Lisa Harris
Telephone (& mobile):
01449 612229
Email:
lisa.harris@eastanglianlife.org.uk