Case studies

Mansfield on Sea

Mansfield Museum has been running summer exhibitions for the past three years, with each year getting more ambitious and attracting more and more people.

The summer 2007 exhibition changed perceptions about museums and brought visitors flocking to Mansfield museum again and again, some even visiting every day over the summer holidays. The exhibition ... a beach complete with 20 tonnes of sand, deck chairs, branded rock and a host of summer holiday memories from staff and visitors.

The idea came from a visit to a local school that had a sand pit in its hall for its nativity play. From there, the idea got bigger and bigger as all the museum staff added their thoughts and their memories of beach holidays.

The beach has a long link with landlocked Mansfield as local mine workers used to queue on station platforms and for buses to take them on day trips to the sands at Skegness. In its collection, the museum had photos of the excursions with hundreds of people waiting for their break at the beach. In total 500 photos of seaside visits past, from the collection and provided by staff and visitors, covered one of the walls and made the connection between the 2007 beach and an important part of local history.

The exhibition took a week to install and involved all the museum staff. It opened in August 2007 and ran for three extremely successful months. It attracted 16,500 visitors in 11 weeks and brought different people to the museum, many of whom hadn’t visited before.

All in all the exhibition couldn’t have gone better. Staff and visitors loved it and no-one tired of sitting in the deck chairs, to such an extent that they had almost worn through by the end of the three months. The real challenge is how to beat the beach.

Find out more about the Mansfield on Sea exhibtion in the full case study below:
Mansfield on Sea (31 kb)

Creativity and inspirational events get the visitors flocking to Alford House

Alford Manor House, reputedly the largest thatched manor house in Britain, can be found in Lincolnshire. The property is run by Alford Civic Trust and needs to raise £3,500 each month to cover all its costs. The property underwent significant and essential refurbishment between June 2004 and June 2006 to ensure that floors and walls didn’t collapse with money raised by the Civic Trust led by its new chairman.

The total cost of the refurbishment was £1.3 million with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Lincolnshire County Council, East Lindsey District Council and the Alford Town Council.

A grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation meant that three months before Alford Manor House was due to reopen, Sara Blair Manning began her role as part time manager until 2009. Sara began with a clear vision to make the property self financing by 2010 and saw a great opportunity to maximise the appeal of the house as a museum, venue and community resource with a clean page to start from.

Sara has worked with a team of volunteers to identify the opportunities and has already more than doubled the number of visitors, starting Alford Manor House’s progress to financial stability. This has included an events programme, using the site's tea room effectively and using the Manor House as a venue for weddings and other events and slowly utilising the House's collections many of which are still in storage following the refurbishment.

Everything is working extremely well so far. Find out more about what Sara and her team of volunteers have been doing in the full case study: Alford Manor House case study (36 kb)

Snapping the Light Fantastic in Kettering

The Alfred East Art Gallery had a scheduling opportunity, something seized on by staff at the Gallery and Manor House Museum as the chance for a creative, photography-based community project and exhibition. The Gallery had had fewer photography exhibitions than other art forms and staff felt that it could help raise the gallery’s profile as almost everyone can relate to photography as most people have a camera (even if it’s their mobile phone).

So the ‘Light Fantastic’ project was developed involving five workshops led by professional photographers, culminating in an exhibition opening on 15 December 2007 at the Art Gallery. The project had five photographic themes on which the workshops were based and under which the exhibition, of professional and amateur photographs, would fall:

• Action
• Landscape
• Urban
• Still life
• Portrait

The professional photographers’ framed images were the centre piece of each themed wall, but all other contributions came from local people who could add their own images with input, but no interference, from the professional photographers and curators as part of a creative day. This day was extremely popular and very positive. A host of amateur photographers gathered and were delighted to be able to discuss their images with the professionals and get hints and tips on framing and display as well as the composition of the photographs.

See below for a full copy of the case study.

Snapping the Light Fantastic case study (37 kb)

Mansfield cultural cooperation film project

Mansfield Museum is part of the Renaissance East Midlands cluster groups project, investigating local audiences to better attract them to the museum. As part of this and linked to a local focus on diversity, the museum wanted to take on a project in partnership with the theatre to engage with a different part of the local community.

One idea was a multi-cultural festival with African drumming, Asian food etc, but museum staff quickly realised that the town does not have a wide ethnic mix; rather it has a relatively high percentage of new residents from Eastern Europe and particularly Poland.

With funding from the District Council and Renaissance East Midlands, the museum and theatre saw an opportunity for a creative and engaging project to work with Polish and British students. The project aimed to use the citizenship curriculum as a tool to find out how different – or similar - teenagers from different cultures are. 

Museum staff approached the local Catholic secondary school, All Saints School, which had a mix of Polish and British students. The aim was to develop a positive project where students worked together to develop a film.

Two introductory sessions were held at the museum, asking students and project workers to bring an item that they felt identified them. Museum staff expected quite a few mobile phones but were surprised by some of the choices and the reasons behind them. Items included jewellery, bibles, soft toys given by friends and one mobile phone that was important as it was used to keep in touch with friends back in Poland.

The film project has already started to change perceptions as one Polish student’s parents are dentists, not a job regularly associated with Polish migrants. The project has also helped to build links between the British and Polish students who hadn’t really mixed before.

The final DVD (in English with Polish subtitles) will be finished by the end of May and enough copies will be made to go to all local schools as well as being shown in the museum. The museum is also looking to add Polish items to its collection and to develop a linked exhibition.

For more information see the full case study below:
Mansfield cultural cooperation film project (27 kb)