Blog

written by Gareth Harris, 08.09.2014 Stockport Council needs to save £40m by 2017 and is considering plans to run its museums at “arm’s length” in a bid to meet savings targets and boost income. The council aims to reduce its total budget by almost £40m between 2015 and 2017. A council report dating from 12 August says that “a new ...

by Steven Garland The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections held their latest international conference from 22nd to 27th June in Cardiff. It was organised jointly with the UK groups NatScA and GCG and hosted by the National Museum of Wales. The first day consisted of site visits including to Big Pit, the innovative South Wales coalfield Geo-heritage ...

written by Chrissy Partheni The NWFED is committed to promoting equality and human rights issues in museum and heritage practices and offering a critical platform for new ideas and innovative work.  Given the range of recent projects on LGBTQI communities and histories across the North , our May event was an opportunity to celebrate the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia and to bring different practitioners together to ...

Manchester Museum, Museum of Liverpool, Imperial War Museum North, the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston, St. Helen's Glass Museum and the Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent are among the Northern museums featured in the stories selected for the writing competition Inspired by. The competition was launched at the MA conference in Nov 2013 offering the opportunity to selected writers to ...

written by Chrissy Partheni Identifying your museum's unique offer, using small, specialised collections to engage imaginatively with your audiences and making the most of any available resources  are key factors  to any museum's success.  The Greater Manchester Police Museum does all the above well and has ambitious plans for the future. The museum is housed in a listed building which served as the headquarters of the Greater Manchester Police until its ...

The Atkinson holds a shrimping cart in its collection that has recently been conserved by local craftsman Phill Gregson. This cart will be going onto display in the new museum space in 2015 along with associated objects. The plan was always to take the newly restored cart out for one last fishing trip before it went onto display which would ...

A review article written by Emma Sumner Knowsley Council have made a huge cultural investment as part of their regeneration plans for Kirkby.  Recently opening the £5m purpose built Kirkby Centre, the council has transformed the old tired and dated building in to a modern fit-for-purpose facility where all its key services will be housed.  Most importantly, the centre contains ...

There has been a lot of discussion lately on the importance of partnerships within our sector and beyond. Following the NMDC meeting at the end of January on national partnerships and the ICOM Uk conference on international partnerships in London,  the Cumbria Museums Consortium organised the Power of Partnerships conference to reflect on current practices and to demonstrate the evidence of thriving new models of ...

  We had a really interesting afternoon on the 17 March, on the NWFED visit to the Chadwick Resource Centre. Pierrette Squires and Don Stenhouse from Bolton Museums welcomed everyone to the centre and shared their experiences and expertise. The event was a great opportunity to find out about the integrated pest management system in place for the store, the sustainable use of energy ...

The Whitworth reopens its doors on 25 October 2014 as an extended gallery in a park, with new exhibition spaces and greatly enhanced visitor facilities that redefine its role for the 21st century. The new Whitworth physically and visually reconnects the gallery with its surrounding park. The extended display areas reach into the landscape, with new and recently acquired sculpture ...

Macclesfield Silk Heritage Trust http://www.silkmacclesfield.org.uk/ The post-industrial town of Macclesfield, located in the east of Cheshire and close to Greater Manchester was once the world's biggest producer of finished silk.  At the height of Macclesfield’s production in 1832, over seventy mills were in operation and unsurprisingly evidence of the town’s industrial past is still highly prevalent in its architectural character ...

We had a fantastic response to our 7th February networking event on Museums Change Lives with almost 50 people attending the afternoon. Students for the networking event came not just from the University of Manchester but from Nottingham, Leicester and Huddersfield. The Coal Room at the People's History Museum was buzzing with the lively conversations and the energy of the professionals and ...