My name is Tonia and I’ve been working in museums for 20 years, 15 of those at management level. I work with museums of all sizes and am a passionate believer that engaging people with history at a local level, leads to a life-long love of, and passionate advocacy for, museums and culture!
When not working for my clients or developing resources, I can be found on my allotment or in a bookshop.
For details of my current clients and training opportunities, please see below. A copy of my privacy policy can be downloaded here.
In 2025-26
I’m continuing to deliver the Stronger Museums programme for Museum Development Midlands. This ran as Organisational Health in 2024, supporting twelve museums with resilience, funding, Accreditation, succession planning, business planning and advocacy. Using cohort learning, one-to-one sessions and networking, this year’s participants will have the chance to work through challenges and opportunities in a supporting environment.
The Association of Independent Museums were recently awarded a second round of Know Your Neighbourhood funding to support the original Connected Communities delivery organisations. These nine cultural organisations will be tackling the stigma of chronic loneliness and delivering high quality volunteering opportunities. I will be once more supporting the cohort through peer to peer learning, mentoring and knowledge sharing.
Also for AIM, I have been writing two new toolkits: Tackling Chronic Loneliness and Delivering High Quality Volunteering. These will be published on 17 July 2025. With Museum Development South East, I have been collaborating on their new Forward Planning guide.
For Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Museum, I will be evaluating their exciting Kabaddi World Cup Cultural Programme.
Volunteering and Trusteeships
- Accreditation mentor for Tenbury Wells museum
- Volunteer at Morville Dower House Gardens
- Trustee for Hundred Heroines
Previous Clients
- Association of Independent Museums: project officer and Legacy Co-Manager for the Connected Communities grant programme; project support officer for New Stories New Audiences grant programme
- Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Museum: evaluation for the Living with Difference project, funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation
- Tudor House Museum: evaluation for the Arts Council England funded Bedfellows project
- Gordon Russell Design Museum: helping the team at this independent museum develop a realistic yet ambitious audience development plan, supported with research and with guidance to additional funding.
- Tenbury Wells Museum: as project development consultant, I helped this volunteer-led museum prepare for a new lease of life by carrying out a feasibility study and writing funding bids.
- National Football Museum: delivered Carbon Literacy for Museums training to over 30 members of staff throughout 2023.
- Hundred Heroines: I was really pleased to be working with this innovative arts organisation within Gloucester. They are dedicated to raising the profile of women in photography, amplifying their work and their voices.
- Everything to Everybody: Part of the evaluation team for this amazing multi-arts, multi-cultural Birmingham heritage project. The final evaluation report was published earlier in 2024. You can find a link to it in my blog.
Training
Mental Health First Aid Aware
As part of my commitment to supporting better workplaces, I took part in this training in March 2022 and will be developing easy-to-use resources for museums as a result.
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion is vital to museums and it was a priviledge to be on the training provided by West Midlands Museum Development and Inclusive Boards.
Collections Care & Accreditation
Social Media and Marketing
Volunteer Management
Carbon Literacy
I’m now a certified Carbon Literacy for Museums trainer and will be leading a series of workshops in 2023. Contact me for more information, including costs and how to book.
Website & Social Media Content Accessibility
Training aimed at creating web and social media content that’s accessible, useful and interesting for blind and visually impaired users.
Leaders Programme
Provided by the Association of Independent Museums, this year-long training gave a solid grounding in leadership, strategic planning and organisational resilience.
Employment
The Almonry
Almonry Museum, Evesham. My very first museum role! I worked here for 14 years, the last nine of them as manager. I learned a lot about staff management, Listed building management, collection care, Accreditation and wrote a successful £1.4million National Lottery Heritage Fund (formerly HLF) bid.
Tudor House Museum
My last Museum Manager role at this intriguing little site took everything I’d previously learned and mixed it all together. I managed staff, volunteers and a Listed building. During my time, I increased visitor numbers by 40% and successfully managed an NLHF funded project involving capital works and a museum-wide redevelopment of the interpretation.
The Coffin Works
For two years, I was their Volunteer and Operations Manager, during which I learned so much about the effective use of social media, volunteer management and growing diversity. I continued as a volunteer (writing their monthly newsletters) for another three years. As the CW saying goes, “you can clock out but you can never leave!”
The Collett Consultancy 