Minutes of the Autumn Group Meeting held on
Monday 22nd October 2012 at the West Coker Village Hall (Hosted by Dawes Twine Works, West Coker)
Present: Colin Spackman (Chairman) and 24 members.
Apologies were received from 8 members.
1. Ross Aitken welcomed members to West Coker Village Hall and gave a brief history about Dawes Twine Works, on the other side of the road. An interesting exhibition about its history had been laid out in the hall for members to see. The first account of flax and hemp being grown locally was in 1365. Twines were used to sew sailcloth together. Coker sailcloth was used for navy and pirates alike. At least six ships at Trafalgar had Coker sailcloth. A sales ledger had been found in a loft dating to 1868-74 and consisted of 192 pages, which was on display to the group.
2. The Minutes of the Spring Group Meeting AGM were agreed and signed.
3. Matters Arising: Somerset Cricket Museum had saved money on insurance as a result of the presentation at the Spring meeting. Similar presentations for future meetings would be useful.
4. Chairman’s report: Colin Spackman read out the letter he had written in response to the Somerset County Council Heritage & Libraries Service Review. The committee had met recently and discussed changing the constitution, to have three or more committee members. This would allow members to serve on the committee first before holding an office and could take effect from the Spring AGM 2013. We have also discussed the possibility of MIS becoming a registered charity. Somerset is well represented on the SW Federation of Museums and Art Galleries and these individuals regularly attend Museums in Somerset meetings. The national economic difficulties together with this summer’s weather may have had a dampening effect on the number of visitors to the south west. The National Trust’s visitor numbers are down by 12% compared to last year. It will be interesting to see how Museums in Somerset visitor figures compare.
5. Secretary’s report: Jane Hill introduced herself as new secretary and thanked the previous secretary, Barbara Gilbert for her hard work.
6. Next Group Meeting: Barbara Gilbert reminded the group that Charlotte Berry had offered a venue in Street and to see if this was still possible. The provisional date is Monday 25 February 2013.
7. Treasurer’s report: There is one bank account, but two separate parts – the general account (tea and coffee, donations etc) and the restricted funds i.e. grants. The restricted funds are overspent by £22, which will be claimed back from Somerset County Council. We had problems getting statements delivered to an appropriate address which are now resolved. We incurred a £23 cost when paying Higher Sites – the Somerset Routes website developers, due to the change of address from Taunton Castle to the Somerset Heritage Centre. The accountant has not signed the accounts so we will adopt the 2011/12 accounts along with the 2012/13 account at the 2013 AGM.
8. South Western Federation of Museums and Art Galleries: Barbara Gilbert the rep for Somerset, gave this report. The SW Development Project was doing a similar job to the old Area Museum Council. There is a new website. Natalie Watson is Communications Officer and is writing e-bulletins. Helena Jaeschke writes the Museum Answers blog. The newsletter is becoming expensive to mail out, so it will start arriving by email if members opt in to this option. The SWFed has appointed a Training Organiser, Sarah Lewis. A total of 16 new sessions have been planned with the underlying theme of sustainability. Sally Lewis is the SWFed Coordinator and will attend some of the meetings. Membership is £20 until March 2014 and is a good deal. The benefits include free entry to participating museums in the SW. The Federation is part of the SW Museum Development Partnership. Natalie’s job as Somerset Museums Development Officer (MDO) is part funded by this. Please complete the survey on the website, deadline 24 October 2012.
9. Arts Council England: Mary Godwin gave this report. The main job of the Arts Council England (ACE) is to allocate money for agreed purposes and there are five goals for museums. ACE will fund the big museums and museums development to March 2015. The museum development programme supports the small museums to support the MDO and the grants programme. It is receiving expressions of interest funding ‘strategic support fund’ for medium sized museums (over 15,000 visitors, or a partnership of museums). The minimum grant is £50,000 and the deadline is 30th October 2012. There will be £15 million available for museums next year. ACE has commissioned some funds this year, a total of £92,000 over six counties. The localities where it works are where the museum has a strategy and a plan so there is no duplication of effort. To access strategic funding a museum has to be accredited or working towards accreditation. Museums have to be financially sound before they can access the funding. The ACE money comes from the tax payer, so it has to be used carefully. The SW Federation of Museums and Art Galleries is the delivery organisation is the delivery organisation for training.
A discussion then took place from the floor as it was pointed out that many small museums have had funding from district councils withdrawn and need support for core funding, such as paying utility bills. Mary said that local authorities should be funding their local museums and there was a need for hard tactics to make it harder for them to cut museums’ budgets.
10. ‘Somerset Remembers 1914-2014’: Sam Astill, Project Manager, Somerset Heritage & Libraries Service, gave a presentation about this project. 2014 will be the centenary of the First World War and will be a poignant moment in national life. The aims are to: connect with the war, pay tribute to it, explore the impact of the war, create lasting legacy to include exhibitions in the Museum of Somerset (Taunton), Weston-super-Mare museum, volunteering, digitisation, public programmes, schools, promotional material and a travelling exhibition. The themes will include: fighting the war and its impact on the people of Somerset, the changing role of women, the changing landscape, visitor contributions, an online community archive and project web pages on the Somerset Heritage Service website. There will be volunteering opportunities on the collections and exhibition, parish returns project, newspaper project, archives project and at the Museum of Somerset. Events will include a football match on a memorial playing field, music, drama, poetry, evening talks, a living history day, symposium, a Take One project and learning sessions for schools. The project will start in April 2013 and run for two years if successful.
11. Data Capture: Colin Spackman and Natalie Watson circulated the data capture forms. There is a need to get data from accredited or nearly accredited museums or heritage organisations that get support/take part in training. Natalie has a target of 70% response, then 75%, than 80% year on year. Headings include: 1. Number of visits (the form is broken into four quarters of the year). 2. Museums users e.g. research, visits. Do you capture it? How could you capture it? How could you capture it in the future? What issues could you foresee in the future to collect this data? 3. Educational activity e.g. sessions delivered at museums, sessions delivered off site. Also informal learning sessions e.g. talks to local societies. , 4. Activities and events, e.g. sessions on site, off site and attendees at off site events. 5. Financial operations e.g. turnover, admissions, other income, donations, grant income and number of grant applications. 6. Museum workforce e.g. number of volunteers, volunteer hours, FTE paid employees. 7. Other information e.g. Have you done anything at the museum? Have you stopped doing anything at the museum? Opening hours and dates for seasonal closure.
This will be an annual process and will useful local data too.
12. Museum Development Officer’s report: Natalie Watson gave this report: The Somerset Routes website has had over 5,000 people visit the site. There are 433 Facebook friends. Over 400 user-submitted photographs. Natalie then outlined the Digital Development Project. This is led by six Museum Development Officers in six counties – Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire as well as Somerset. There has been £12,300 funding from Arts Council England to enhance the Somerset Routes website. A Content Creator will be recruited to write travel itineraries. There will be two training days on updating information. A training day will be held on 7 December 2012 called ‘Making the Most of Your Website’. ‘Small Grants, Big Improvements’, opens in November and is open to accredited museums or those working towards it. Grants of £250 are available to fund work across any of Arts Council England’s five goals. Grants of £1,000 will fund work on goal 3: Resilience (requires 255 match funding). There are five phases of the grant 2012-2015. There is a Take One project in collaboration with the National gallery. A training day for this will be held on 9 January.
13. Causes for Celebration: Dunster Dolls Museum has a new committee, is applying for grants so that the museum will have other displays such as local history and has £15,000 to improve buildings and displays. Wincanton Museum has closed but is re-opening a small museum in the local library. Minehead’s History Society is interested in setting up a museum. The Brick and Tile Museum, Bridgwater is owned by Somerset County Council and is staffed by social services who are under financial pressure. The museum may close as social services remove their staff. Other community groups are being approached to run it. It could be a social enterprise.
14. Reports from Member Organisations:
Axbridge and District Museum
The King John’s Hunting Lodge Museum in Axbridge has not had a good year this year, along with many other tourist attractions. Attendance, sales and donations were all down. We will actually make a loss on the year, which we can maintain for possibly two or three years, but little more. The Committee has had a major open and frank discussion concerning this and is aware of some hard choices that we need to make to remain viable if visitors do not increase. One of our objectives is to increase our Friends organisations. We have two sections: Private Friends and Corporate Friends. Our Corporate Friends have paid £100 each for an advertisement in a leaflet we have now published, which covers the design and printing costs and leaves a healthy bonus for us. All are small private companies and shops. To encourage our Private Friends, John Page is giving a talk next month on the Revd Gould, Vicar of Axbridge, who was reputed to have “two black eyes, honestly earned by fighting,” a well-known local incident, though nobody has known the story behind it, which is very third-world politics.
Looking to the future, we aim to have a Christmas display from some newspaper cuttings collected by a local resident who was born in the Workhouse, then was adopted and lived in the house now owned by our Treasurer, who was given the Scrap Books. Next season we aim to modify our Workhouse display to become a “Welfare through the Ages” display, including the Elizabethan Poor Laws and the Settlement Orders which revealed so much about the poor of the area. We also wish to put a greater emphasis on the Plantagenet building we occupy by providing small captions and more extensive notes, on laminated sheets, for our visitors. If time permits we also want to produce a Guide Book to the house and museum, with a brief history of the town.
Still in prospect, but potentially very exciting, is the local discovery of a large number of horseshoes spanning a period of around 1,000 years, from Saxon times to the 18th century. We have been told that this is unequalled within the kingdom except for a collection in the Museum of London, which came from all over the capital. Ours were located in a single field, which may even provide more examples to enhance the collection. This could also be used as an object in new “Take One” links with local schools.
We still live in interesting times, but there are two ways of looking at that!
Watchet Boat Museum
We have just enough volunteers to be open for two hours seven days a week. When we closed for the winter at the end of September the total visitor number was about 12% down on last year but level with the last seven years average. We are pleased that local primary schools continue to bring classes to visit to us.
District Council appear quite keen to grant us a 25 year full repairing lease. This should enable us to gain grants for the £25,000 or more urgent remedial building work. Regrettably we cannot access the large Section106 fund as that is for capital projects only. Any advice/suggestions on appropriate funds would be appreciated.
Two highlights during the year were the visit to Watchet of HRH Princess Royal in September and the museum's special event during the Watchet Summertime week of entertainment in August. HRH was celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Watchet lighthouse and spent over two hours in the town including visiting the Boat Museum.
Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust
The Trust’s primary concern remains the decision by the West Somerset Railway not to renew the lease on Washford Station, the Headquarters of the Trust and the location of its museum, shop and workshops. The lease runs out in 2020.