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Cornwall Museum Group Meeting
9th March 2015 – Looe Guild Hall
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MINUTES
Attended:
Jo Mattingly – Museum Development Officer
Bruce Hunt – Saltash Museum
Linda Higgins – Perranzabuloe Museum
Helen Luther – Fowey Museum
Mervyn Mitchell – Newquay Old Cornwall Society
Henrietta Boex – Falmouth Art Gallery
Ellie Collier – HLF Catalyst Fundraising Programme
Sue Ford – Wheal Martyn
Bryony Robins – Cornwall Museums Development Officer
Charlotte Dando – Telegraph Museum Porthcurno
Angela Richards – Wadebridge Museum
Geoff Richards – Wadebridge Museum
Trevor Stipling – Cornwall’s Regimental Museum
Vic Harding – SW Museum Development Partnership
Christine Walton – Lostwithiel Museum
Tremar Menendez – Lostwithiel Museum
Esthermary Todd – Lostwithiel Museum
Len Sheppard – Newquay Old Cornwall Society
Marilyn Thompson – Newquay Old Cornwall Society
Chris Shinner – Newquay Old Cornwall Society
Barbara Moffatt -Trerice
Helen Hide – Trerice
Sarah Parsons – National Maritime Museum Cornwall
Marjorie Rose – Wadebridge Museum
Helen Rawe – Wadebridge District Museum
Annette McTavish – Tate St Ives
David Fuller – Looe Museum
(Barbara & Neil Birchwood – guided tour at Looe Museum)
Jo Smith – HLF Catalyst Fundraising Programme
Apologies:
Rachel Brown – Tate St Ives
Rachel Hunt – Cotehele (National Trust)
Jo Warburton – East Pool Mine
Anthony Power – Levant Mine
Jo Moore – Wheal Martyn
Kevin Baker – King Edward Mine
Chloe Phillips – Archives & Cornish Studies
Hella Torvar – Liskeard Museum
Gemma Martin – Wheal Martyn
Mary Godwin - Arts Council
Sue Perry – Lanhydrock House (National Trust)
Steph Meads – MDO
Hayley Buscombe – Borlase Smart John Wells Trust
Item
1
Laura Christon – Harvey’s Foundry Hayle
Anne Laity – Marazion Museum
John Wallis – Marazion Museum
Margaret & Brian Stevens – St Ives Museum
Carol Richardson Bunbury – Lawrence House
Louis Turner – Poly History Group
Emma Jones – Curator National Trust Cornwall
Zoe Burkett – Education and outreach officer – Penlee House
Tamsin Daniel – Culture Officer Cornwall Council
Jan Horrell - MDO
Katherine Aston – Helston Museum
Discussion
Welcome:
Jo Mattingly welcomed the meeting and explained that she would be standing in for
Steph who was not well.
Action
Jo confirmed that all were in agreement with the previous minutes of the meeting in
December.
2
Appointment of Chair and Vice Chair of the Cornwall Museums Group
Jo explained that as the current MDO team were stepping down there would need to be
a new Chair-person appointed to lead future CMG groups and invited members to put
themselves forward for this role. Garry Mockett, Penryn Museum is the current Vice
Chair of the CMG group. Jo emphasised that it is really important that someone from the
CMG undertake this role to make sure that the museums group has a voice of its own in
the way these meetings are delivered and there is representation for the smaller
museums. If you would like to forward yourself for this role please contact Jo Smith on:
JSmith@Wheal-martyn.com
3
Introducing Bryony Robin new MDO for Cornwall
Bryony introduced herself to the group. She shared her background and explained that
she had previously worked on an HLF capital development project in Newark,
Nottinghamshire. A particular part of her role in the project was focussing on the
business plan and forward planning. She has also been involved in volunteer recruitment
and community engagement. She has been a strong leader in fundraising for the
projects she has work on previously and has enjoyed success in this area. Another of her
roles has been as a regional Museum Development Officer developing particular skills in
e-learning and digital development.
She has volunteering and mentoring experience and has, most recently, provided
support for a museum in Skegness, which is a seasonal coastal town. This has given her
an appreciation of the difficulties and challenges faced by organisations who struggle to
survive due to their geographical location and unpredictability of visitor numbers.
4
SW Museum Federation Updates
Charlotte Dando gave an update on the latest news from the SW Fed. Slides attached
with these minutes.
The biggest news is that they have recently been awarded £38,000 in ACE funding to
facilitate innovation and development of the group and to enable it to become the focal
point of the museum sector in the South West. The funding will also help to increase
growth in membership, improve administration and marketing and develop new funding
streams for projects, services and membership initiatives. Another strand will be to
research the need for skills development for early/mid-career museum and heritage
professionals and volunteers and target that need appropriately.
Dates for the diary:
6th May – The SW Fed Spring forum on Governance to be held at MShed in Bristol.
8th July – SW Fed Conference and AGM on Volunteering to be held in Plymouth venue to
be confirmed.
The family of Maureen Attrill, the former curator of art at Plymouth City Museum, have
funded a bursary in her name of up to £1,000 to support research on the museum’s
collections of fine or decorative art. Applications need to be submitted by 5pm on 23 rd
March full details on the SW Fed website http://www.swfed.org.uk/
Detailed news and further information can be found on the SW Feb Powerpoint
presentation attached with these minutes.
5
Small Grant Big Improvement Programme
Vic Harding gave an update on the Small Grant Big Improvement Programme and
explained that it has been extended from end of 31st March to 30th April. The grant
programme is driven by an applicant museums forward plan and there is no clear
definition about what it does and doesn’t fund, it basically funds the priorities of the
museum making the application. There are three strands the first being £500, which
doesn’t require match funding, secondly grants up to £2,000 which will require 25%
match. The third strand is a grant of up to £5,000 which will require a consortium of
museums to get together to apply for the funding. The criteria for the third strand will
be around themes such as; improving the quality of your retail offer for example to buy
in the services of a consultant or perhaps working on the recruitment of volunteers. For
more information please contact Vic on the email address below:
Victoria.Harding@bristol.gov.uk or log onto:
http://www.southwestmuseums.org.uk/projects-grants/small-grant-bigimprovement/?utm_source=SWFed+Membership+List&utm_campaign=79bce6845aSWFed_E_Bulletin_Issue_28_Feb_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d94130bfd4
-79bce6845a-60925673
6
Digitisation Project Telegraph Museum Porthcurno
Charlotte Dando also did a presentation on the Digitisation Project which is due to start
in April at the Telegraph Museum Porthcurno. It will be a three year project to
catalogue, re-house and digitise the collection of photographs focusing on telegraph
stations around the world, including the staff who were stationed there.
Charlotte offered to share the experience gained from this project with the whole of the
CMG group and invited anyone who is involved with this type of activity to contact her if
they need help or advice.
A copy of Charlotte’s Powerpoint presentation with details of the project and some of
the photos is attached with these minutes.
7
Developing and Managing Projects – Henrietta Boex – Falmouth Art Gallery
Henrietta is the Director of Falmouth Art Gallery which houses 1,700 pictures both on
display and in storage and 50 automata. She has great ambitions for the gallery and
would like to increase visibility and visitor numbers and also to make it more accessible
and an integral part of the library and the community.
Prior to taking up post in Falmouth Art Gallery, Henrietta managed a capital build project
at the Telegraph Museum in Porthcurno. The museum was in a sorry state with
dilapidated buildings that were in serious need of refurbishment.
With any project there needs to be a starting point and in Henrietta’s case this started
with the Vision and Forward Plan. She explained that the vison for the future should
include a number of ‘So That’ scenarios i.e. “I’m going to renovate this building” so that
“I can preserve the collection” so that “people will have better access to the collection”
so that “its future is secured and it can be enjoyed for generations to come”. It is very
important to have a clear vision when applying to funders and if you go through the
process of developing this vision, you have the starting point from which everything else
then radiates.
When she started the project in 2008 she did an options analysis to look at ways to make
the museum function better. The best option which came out of this analysis was to
improve the visitor experience by re-building the infrastructure. The flow through
experience for the visitors at that time was not good and there was nowhere for visitors
to shelter at the entrance to the museum if the weather was inclement.
The first bid put in was for £750,000 to Heritage Lottery Fund to build a reception area at
the back of building in a contemporary style.
Through questionnaires and analysis of customer feedback, it was also ascertained that
another negative aspect of the visitor experience was the noise from visiting school
children from the galleries. There was a disused building at the bottom of the site which
was ideal for a learning centre and it was decided that this could also house the archive.
This increased the scope of the project from the original £750,000 to around £2.5 million.
This was a daring leap from the original scope of the project but the team felt it was
worth going back to the HLF and seeing if they would fund both aspects of the project.
The main criteria the HLF use for awarding funds is that activity must include; learning,
participation and conservation. Therefore the round two bid, put in by the project team,
was all about community engagement and inclusion.
The increase in the bid meant that the funding strategy had to change. The HLF stated
that if the bid was kept under £1.5m there was a better chance of the funding being
awarded. The next challenge was to find match funding of 51%. Henrietta set to work
sifting through all the Trusts and Foundations to narrow down which ones might support
this sort of project and then applied to them to come up with the match. She applied to
Clore Duffield who pledged £125,000. Because this funder was willing to support the
project this encouraged other funders to commit varying amounts of funding.
There were problems with the contractors not completing on time which affected the
moving of the archive. Also the amount of funding needed for the architects and
designers was underestimated. However, once the building work was completed the
team were able to celebrate having a much improved space and visitor offer and
congratulate themselves on making great strides towards excellence.
Since joining Falmouth Art Gallery, Henrietta has won a further £32k for a project to
enable her to double the numbers involved in community engagement. She has also
been able to improve the scope of learning experience, working with dementia cafés,
baby painting and other activities of this type.
An outcome of this is that one of her volunteers, who was particularly interested in
helping people with dementia, has now been awarded a Winston Churchill travel
scholarship to go to the USA to research best practice in dementia care.
The summary of Henrietta’s advice was to not be afraid to think big and dream large
dreams. She stated that she would be happy to work with anyone who felt they needed
help and advice on a project and to contact her if they thought she could be of
assistance.
Henrietta Boex: director@falmouthartgallery.com
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Cornwall’s Regimental Museum – Major Trevor Stipling
Trevor is the curator of Cornwall’s Regimental Museum. He gave some background on
the Regimental Museum and explained that it is mainly funded by the MOD who pay the
salaries of the staff, maintain the building and support the back office functions. Due to
cutbacks, the MOD is having to make 7 posts in the county redundant and when Trevor
retires in October of this year his post will no longer be funded. The Trustees therefore
need to find a way to fund the post of Museum Director into the future. In 2018 the
funding will be withdrawn for the maintenance of the building and the function of the
back office so forward planning is needed to keep the whole museum going beyond that
point. The museum assistant post and the actual building itself are safe until 2030.
The Trustees have commissioned Emmie Kell Consultancy to put together a business case
and engaged Sarah Ferrie to come up with a marketing strategy. There is a contingency
fund of around £250k in investments which can be used to pay for this type of thing but
this only gives a short term comfort factor. They have recognised that this won’t last
long and a longer term solution needs to be in place in order to survive into the future.
They carried out a Strengths and Weaknesses (SWAT) analysis to decide what was
needed to be done to make them sustainable up to 2030 and beyond. The SWAT has
looked at where they can generate more income. This is a challenge at the moment is
there hasn’t been much emphasis on income generation due to the support of the MOD
and there is currently no admission fee and visitors are asked to make a donation. The
conference rooms are also let on a donation basis as they are not allowed, under the
MOD rules, to charge for them and if they did the MOD would take 85% of the income.
Therefore there needs to be a culture change within the organisation to focus on
increasing visitor numbers, finding ways to charge for facilities and activity and lookinf at
grants to support their organisation. The new director will need to have skills in creative
income generation and other staff may have to be recruited to support this activity.
Trevor welcomed any advice which the group can offer to help improve their
sustainability especially from those who have experience of a similar organisation.
Trevor Stipling: dclimus@talk21.com
9
Saltash Heritage Museum – Bruce Hunt – Vice Chairman
Bruce gave a very interesting talk on promoting your museum to those that matter.
The biggest challenge for Saltash Heritage Museum is visibility. As it is on the end of Fore
Street there is no passing trade.
The museum contains 22k photos and 50k documents of the Saltash area. The whole
collection is now almost all digitised.
The museum is completely volunteer run, with a committee of 10-12 people. A team of
stewards looks after the museum in 2 hour shifts. There is no real income stream so
everything has to be done at minimum cost.
As well as a quarterly Newsletter, the museum runs activities such as coach trips and
Christmas parties for the members and stewards.
The main problem is letting people know they exist. They have no footprint on the high
street, so they really have to go out and find people and tell them where the museum is
and what a great place it is to visit. Some of the ways they do this is by; running a slide
show in the local health centre, posters in the library and by doing displays in empty
shop windows which worked very well. They also use outside displays in places such as
the fire station. They make the most of other outside events wherever possible to
promote the history of the area and encourage people to visit the museum. Other places
where they promote themselves are; schools, community halls, residential homes, clubs
and church halls.
In addition to displays they produce; booklets, leaflets, DVDs and datasheets and
promote these wherever they can.
Organising events for local people is also a good way to get people interested. These
range from; coach trips, local visits, public talks, quizzes, walks, story time and May Fair.
Social media is another avenue to promote the museum and connected events. Also
using the regular media such as local newspapers to carry stories about local history
connected to the museum, a regular article is a good idea if you can find someone to
write it.
Children can be very influential in creating interest which can spread to their parents and
family. The museum has recently built a replica first world war trench which has created
great excitement with school children.
Bruce’s enthusiasm was infectious and made it easy to believe that anything can be
achieved given you have the vision and enthusiasm to achieve it.
9
HLF Fundraising Training
Future training dates:
14th April - Finance for fundraisers – learning how to properly interpret your organisation’s
accounts and understand the basic principles of management accounts, balance sheets and
income and expenditure accounts. This will have a special focus on fundraising accounts, for
non-accountants and managers.
19th May - Governance – to be delivered by Counter Culture. In order for your organisation to
survive and thrive and be fit for fundraising it is essential that you have strong governance. The
session will offer help and advice around governance issues and will focus on particular areas of
governance such as reviewing the strengths of an organisation’s board and recruiting new
trustees or directors.
Further details of the above courses will be sent out on the CMG email list. In the meantime for
any enquiries about fundraising training please contact Jo Smith – details below.
Ellie Collier - Programme Manager: ECollier@wheal-martyn.com
Jo Smith - Events and Research Officer: JSmith@wheal-martyn.com
9
10.
AOB
None at this time
Next CMG Meeting:
9th June – Geevor Tin Mine, Pendeen, Penzance, Cornwall TR19 7EW
(make sure you put it in your diary!)
Contact details:
Bryony Robins (MDO Cornwall)
bryony.robins@hotmail.com
Jo Mattingly (interim MDO – Mid Cornwall):
joannamattingly@btinternet.com
Stephanie Meads (interim MDO – N & SE Cornwall): stephanie.meads@btinternet.com
Charlotte Dando (SWFed):
charlotte.dando@porthcurno.org.uk
Melanie Young (Arts Award Co-ordinator)
melanie@watergatefarm.com
Mary Godwin (Arts Council):
Mary.Godwin@artscouncil.org.uk
Ellie Collier – HLF Catalyst Fundraising Project
ECollier@wheal-martyn.com
Jo Smith – HLF Catalyst Fundraising Project
JSmith@wheal-martyn.com
Vic Harding – South West Museum Development Victoria.Harding@bristol.gov.uk