Highlights and initiatives

Renaissance East Midlands works directly with all museums across the East Midlands, particularly through the team of museum development officers (MDOs), including the Leicestershire County Council funded community museums officer.

The MDOs began work in January 2007 to ensure that museums have a voice and that voice is heard at all levels and in all appropriate forums. They help to promote individual museums and the cause of museums in general, working with museums, other organisations and individuals. The MDOs are supporting museums to achieve national standards and to reach their potential, including support to lever in significant funding from external sources. As a result:

• More than £1 million has been levered in to museums through supported funding applications and match funding from the Regional Grant Fund. The grant fund has allocated 38 grants totalling £91,000.
• Thirty museums are working towards Accreditation and 20 museums are working towards other recognised standards. 
• More than 150 East Midlands museums have received personal advice, including hundreds of queries dealt with by the MDOs. 
• Eighty per cent of regional museums are members of their county museum forums; one new county forum has been established and others rejuvenated. 
• Sixty-three new partnerships have been brokered between museums and other organisations including with the destination management partnerships (county tourism bodies), local funders, local authorities, politicians and journalists.
• Forty-six museums have developed new policies.
• Responding to demand, the Sustainable Museums programme, previously funded by ESF, was extended to provide support and board training for more museums in the East Midlands: between September 2007 and March 2008, 31 organisations participated in the Clearing out the Cupboard board training and Practical Partnerships elements.
• Twenty-two tailored training days have been delivered for county museums on topics including documentation, marketing and promotions, managing volunteers, collections care and oral history.  
• Renaissance Heritage Awards schemes and ceremonies were held in each county – Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire – for the first time. The Heritage Awards were extremely successful in bringing museums together to share the excellence that they all achieve each year, often without recognition. The awards also worked to reach out to media and key regional organisations and individuals to demonstrate what museums are achieving, often with volunteers and very limited budgets.