Goodbye 2022!

Whilst it might seem only a few days since I last posted, we are actually careering towards Christmas with all the speed and finesse of a runaway unicycle! I’ve had the great priviledge of working with some super organisations this last quarter of the year and, as a consequence, completely lost track of the months.

Over in the lovely town of Tenbury Wells, I was working with the Museum to carry out a Feasibility Study and skills audit, develop a new Business Plan and write a new funding application. It was a project aimed at developing organisational resilience and growth. The board were a joy to work with and if you’ve never been to Tenbury Wells, it is well worth the visit.

I continued with my work for AIM as project support officer for New Stories New Audiences. This year’s cohort are nearing the end of their project, each one requiring them to work with a new partner, in a co-curatorial way, to attract new audiences. There have been some incredible results, which you can read about here.

With Hundred Heroines in Gloucester, I’ve been helping them as they set up their first physical museum and gallery space. Having started operation in January 2020, they quickly became an active online museum, championing women in photography. Now they’re in the real world with the very opposite of a traditional white cube gallery, and have lots of exciting plans for 2023.

The Everything to Everybody project in Birmingham had a rocky start with the Folio Tours – Covid and restrictions made it hard to meet these outputs – but are now flying through a programme of tours, fun days, exhibitions and collaborations. You can find out what’s coming up next here.

My own workshops went down a storm this year, with over 50 people taking part, from the Mental Health First Aid Awareness training, through to Are You Application Ready. The last one, Museum Mapping, was on the 22nd November and I’m working on a new series for 2023, including Carbon Literacy for Museums.

I’m also an Accreditation Mentor, so if your museum is about to start working towards, or will be renewing your accreditation status and would like some free support, contact me for more information.

Finally, all of the images in this post were taken on my recent trip to Bruges where I got to see incredible art and the most wonderful exhibitions. Interestingly, each and every piece of text (fixed or temporary) was in at least 3 or 4 languages: Flemish, French, Spanish (or German) and English. It was a real eye-opener, given how little we do that over here. Something I’ll be getting clients to consider in the future.

I’ll be finishing up this year on the 21st December and back at my desk on 4th January. In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful festive break!