Regional Grant Fund case studies

Advocating Castle Donington Museum

Grant awarded: £350

Castle Donington Museum is on the edge of county and district council areas and has a Derby postcode which causes confusion. To raise the profile the museum organised an advocacy event for local councillors, MPs and other influentials to make sure they knew the museum was there and what it offered.

The event was funded by a Regional Grant Fund grant of £350, to support the event and provide refreshments for the guests.

The invitations were extended to a preview of a new exhibition on 4 April and guests were offered guided tours and refreshments. Members of the museum’s team of volunteers answered questions and demonstrate some of the work they do to preserve and document the museum’s collection.

The event was attended by local MP, David Taylor, the chairs of the County and District Councils, representatives of the Parish Council and the County Museum and Heritage Services and representatives of local organisations including the Women’s Institute and the Rotary Club.

One guest summed up the impact of the event: “I have so much enjoyed this exhibition and if we had not been invited, Castle Donington is the last place we would have thought of visiting.”

A reeresentative from the museum added: “The grant has helped us to start to put our museum on the map. Our museum lives in a Grade II listed building and we are working on making it ‘noticeable’ to the passing public. Making sure the local great and good know about us is a great start in achieving that.”

Wirksworth Heritage Centre

Amount awarded: £2257.88

Wirksworth is a volunteer run heritage centre, set up as part of a project after a significant, and prize-winning, regeneration project in the town in 1978 – 88. The centre, like many small museums, must concern itself with sustainability as a priority. While they own the building, they need to raise money for repairs and running costs.

In 1999 the centre joined AIM (the Association of Independent Museums) and when a grant opportunity arose (2006), they applied and received £4,500 to employ a consultant to produce a report on the possible future for the centre. The report linked to the development of the town, including the Wirksworth festival, and was ambitious. One of the recommendations was to look at outreach, rather than a museum that people would visit.

Wirksworth Heritage Centre applied for a grant to fund an effective documentation system, MODES, and training for volunteers to enable it to effectively document its collection with a view to digitisation in the future. The grant funding also paid for an expert conservator, Jackie Hyman, to look at some of the items in the collection and recommend the next steps for effective conservation.

Those items of the collection Jackie looked at included a number of Georgian and Victorian costumes donated to the centre by to the centre by the Gell family of Hopton Hall when the Hall was sold. 

The Renaissance East Midlands grant triggered a number of next steps. As a result of the work, EmmS provided funding for storage materials and the centre put in an application for an AIM conservation grant. They were successful and received £6,200 (the only museum to have been awarded Pilgrim Trust / AIM grant). The grant was for the restoration and conservation of the seven items of clothing from Hopton Hall and for a banner celebrating Queen Victoria’s jubilee. The banner has never been exhibited and was donated to the centre when it opened.

AIM was so impressed with the project that it gave additional funding for a case in which the very delicate banner could be displayed.

The centre is aiming for Accreditation in 2009, and without the Renaissance East Midlands funding, which led to the AIM grant, it wouldn’t be possible. Marian Vaughan, chair of directors, of Wirksworth Heritage Centre said: “We depended on the Renaissance East Midlands regional grant to seed fund a much bigger project and to help us get our museum in order to go for Accreditation. It’s been the start of real successes and developments for us.”

Environmental monitoring at Bassetlaw Museum

Grant awarded - £3,000

Bassetlaw Museum was part of the Benchmarks in Collections Care Renaissance East Midlands funded programme, receiving a report and assessment in 2007. Part of the report noted that the museum didn’t have effective environmental monitoring, something the museum was well aware of and keen to do something about, both in terms of monitoring and action. The action was always going to be a challenge because of the old building and limited resources, but the museum was determined to do what it can.

The museum had kept spot readings, but this could only be done when staff were in the buildings, so there were no readings overnight. A digital environmental monitoring system was needed. The Regional Grant Fund provided a chance to implement such a system.

As part of a £680,000 successful lottery bid to refurbish the museum, it was able to put thermostats on to its old radiators, as there is no possibility of a new radiator system. The original system was either on or off, so at least the thermostats mean that the temperature for each radiator can be adjusted so that the temperature can be kept more constant and the humidity better controlled.

The museum has a lot of central heating pipes which were lagged. They don’t look good but it has made an impact on the heat produced by the pipes.

The museum faces both north and south and the south facing rooms become incredibly hot in the summer, with temperatures reaching 31ºC and visitors complaining. The museum, thanks to the Regional Grant Fund money, has put up UV films on its windows, with lower grade on the north side and heat reflecting film on the south facing windows. It has already made a difference and while it still gets warm in the south facing rooms, it is bearable for staff and visitors.

The environmental monitoring system is also now installed and provides automatic readings every 5 – 10 minutes, with information stored on computer. The information has so far shown big fluctuations in the different rooms, but this was expected as the museum is undergoing a wholescale refurbishment, ready to open in June 2008.

The fluctuations have pointed out the need for insulation and the museum is looking into loft insulation, but is prevented so far by the cost and health and safety implications of museum staff doing it themselves.

For curator, Katherine Ashton, the Regional Grant Fund has been invaluable providing both the monitoring system and funding for some of the actions including lagging and window film. The funding has also helped their Accreditation bid enormously.

Exhibiting Leicestershire and Rutland success

Grant awarded: £1,350

Each year the Leicestershire and Rutland Museums Forum holds an exhibition at Snibston on a very limited budget. The exhibitions have been very successful, but limited and without any possible longevity as the displays were often home-made (due to costs) and a bit the worse for wear by the end.

The museums liked getting involved and felt the benefits, but wanted to have a more professional and flexible approach in the future. So working with the community museums officer, Robin Clarke, a plan was hatch to develop a sustainable and high quality exhibition that could be used to promote the counties’ independent sites.

Money came from the Regional Grant Fund, Awards for All and Leicestershire County Council to enable 13 museums to develop coordinated and cost effective pull up banners, something that will last long into the future, and four glass cases to display objects. The museums all developed the text and photos for their banners and had a banner each with three banners devoted to the explaining the Forum and its role.

More museums than usual opted in to the exhibition, and banners, in 2007 and were delighted to be involved in something with long term ambitions. The exhibition at Snibston went extremely well, but the displays and outreach didn’t stop there as the banners are portable and were taken to the archaeology and history fair at Vaughan College in Leicester and have been used singly and in groups at other events and activities by a range of the Leicestershire and Rutland museums.

For the future more museums will be encouraged, and funded, to create their own banners to use both at the annual exhibition, but elsewhere across Leicestershire and Rutland.

Terry Howatt, chair of the Leicestershire and Rutland Museums Forum, said: “This has been a real step up for the Forum’s museums. It has enabled us all to show our professional face and better engage with members of the public at a range of events, exhibitions, fairs and fetes across Leicestershire and Rutland. The money has been very well spent in a sustainable and eye catching way.” 

Newark Air Museum shows the way

Grant awarded: £2,843.50

Newark Air Museum received a Practical Partnership grant as part of the Sustainable Museums project to look at the site’s interpretation. The report highlighted serious issues relating to the museum’s signage on the approach to the museum, a site shared with other organisations.

The existing signs were designed and put up at different times and there was no consistent approach. The museum commissioned designers to produce new consistent signs with a new museum logo and applied to the Regional Grant Fund to buy and erect the signs.

The museum hoped that the new signage would help to achieve elements of its aims to improve visitor satisfaction and reinforce their position as a nationally respected volunteer-led aviation museum. It would also provide a more welcoming start for people’s visit to the museum.

The report and grant for signage helped the site to take a new look at its visual identity, including its front of house, newsletter and brochures, using the new identity in these areas to create a more holistic and readily identifiable brand for volunteers and visitors.

The site feels smarter and provides a more professional outlook with its new signs and new identity and the impact has been very beneficial for the site and particularly for its visitors.

“The original Practical Partnership grant provided a valuable opportunity to review some aspects of interpretation at the museum”, commented Museum Trustee, Howard Heeley. He continued, “The second grant from the Regional Grant Fund gave us the chance to act on the interpretation recommendations and to start a re-branding process, which has led to a more coherent approach to our main site directional signage”. He concluded “The museum is extremely grateful for the support it has received through the awarding of these grants and in developing the new approach to its signage”.

Snapping the Light Fantastic at Kettering Art Gallery

Grant allocated: £3,000

The Alfred East Art Gallery had a scheduling opportunity 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

Funding for the project came from a number of sources including the Renaissance East Midlands’ Regional Grant Fund, Kettering Borough Community Safety Partnership and support in kind from CMYK Imaging (to print the professional images for the exhibition) and Camera Box (donating disposable cameras).

Five professional photographers led one free workshop on each topic. Each workshop had between 25 and 50 participants and many were fully booked. All the workshops ran on Saturdays, some inside and some outside. They were very successful and attracted local participants, those from Kettering and Market Harborough photography societies, local college courses and interested people. Almost all the participants had their own cameras and if not, the museum and art gallery provided disposable cameras courtesy of Camera Box.

The response to the workshops was excellent. Students from the local college were delighted by the direct contact with a professional photographer and to get advice on how to develop an idea for a photograph and how to get the right look – something not as prominent in their college course.

The professional photographers’ framed images were the centre piece of each themed wall in the resulting exhibition, but all other contributions came from local people who added their own images with input, but no interference, from the professional photographers and curators.

Most of the workshop participants haven’t had any contact with the museum or art gallery before.