Minutes of the AGM

Minutes of the AGM

Monday 19th May 2014 at Bridgwater Town Hall

Present: see list below.

Apologies:were received fromAmal Kreisheh (Somerset Heritage Service), Mary Godwin (Arts Council England), Bruce Scott (Watchet Boat Museum), Peter Cattermole (Bridgwater Archives), Tom Mayberry (Somerset Heritage Service), Pam Walker (Shoe Museum), Emma Robinson (Frome Museum)

1. Welcome: The Mayor and Mayoress welcomed members to Bridgwater town hall. This was followed by a welcome from Mike Searle of the Blake Museum, Bridgwater who were to host guided tours for the group in the afternoon.Mike told us that the town hall was built in 1823 as a Judge’s house and had a concert hall behind. Mike spoke about the origins of the Bridgwater name and about the town’s role in medieval times and its rich maritime history. The Blake museum had been saved from closure in 2009. Formerly run by Sedgemoor District Council, it is now run by volunteers, funded by grants from Bridgwater Town Council and Sedgemoor totalling £50,000. The museum has been refurbished as a result.

1. Minutes of the 2013 Annual general Meeting were agreed and formally adopted.

1. Chairman’s report:This is my third and final annual report. This last year has seen two significant events in the heritage of Somerset. Firstly the decision by SCC to pass the management of its obligations over to a Trust has been followed up so that the new trust, now with a working title of the South West Heritage Trust and including Devon County Council’s archives. We hope that the new trust is a success and that we maintain our close relationship with the organisation via the MDOs. The second event is the change of MDO. The changeover from Natalie to Liz and Rachel has been seamless. Thanks to all who have helped to make the handover so smooth. I have enjoyed my stint as Chairman for the last 3 years. Any fears I might have had were unfounded. There has been plenty of experience within the committee to keep me on the right path, so thank you. If there is one thing that hasn’t happened during my Chairmanship that I would have liked, it is a meeting in Shepton Mallett.

Our last meeting in February at the Scout Hut in Bishop’s Lydeard, was well attended and successful. Thanks to Yvonne and Charlie Back for hosting us. I especially enjoyed the marketing session in the afternoon by Jon Jefferies from the Fleet Air Arm Museum and Pippa Griffith from Tiverton Museum. Since that meeting I have:

a)had an informal meeting with Steve Minnitt, Head of Somerset Museums to whom the MDO’s now report, about maintaining the relationship between SCC and MIS.

b)Missed the Heritage Trust Project Stakeholder forum on 2nd April 2014, the first time that has happened as I was committed to Wellington Museum that day. MIS was represented by Mike Moutum.

c)Invited the newly appointed Chairman–in-waiting of the SWHT, David Gwyther to the meeting, if he was available to say a few words and meet a few people. He will try and attend at 3pm and we hope that he will be able to attend a future meeting to speak about the trust.

1. Secretary’s report: Over the last year I have corresponded with staff/volunteers about arrangements for group meetings at Weston-super-Mare museum(for the October meeting), Bishop’s Lydeard Mill (for the February meeting) and Bridgwater town hall and the Blake Museum, Bridgwater for today’s AGM. I have also attended all of the committee meetings at Somerset Heritage Centre. Thank you for continuing to send me your reports for inclusion in the minutes. If you have not done so already, please send me your recent news so for inclusion in the 2014 AGM minutes.

1. Treasurer’s report: The income and expenditure account for the year ended 31st March 2014 was presented. The domain name was renewed at a cost of £25.14. Excess of income over expenditure was £155.70 and assets less liabilities were £139.31. The account was signed and approved.

1. Election of officers and standing committee members:

Colin ran through the roles available. Several nominations for office had been received.

Chair: John Page, proposed by Colin Spackman and seconded by Nigel Wood.

Vice Chair, Mike Motum, proposed by John Page, seconded by Colin Spackman.

Secretary,Jane Hill, proposed by Vicky Dawson, seconded by Jim Nicholas.

Treasurer, Angus McPhee, proposed by Colin Spackman, seconded by Jane Hill

General officers: Nigel Wood, Vicky Dawson and Colin Spackman, all proposed by John Page and seconded by Natalie Watson. Charlotte Berry was an ex-officio member as the SWFED rep. Steve Minnitt was to be an ex-officio member, proposed by Colin Spackman and seconded by Jane Hill.

1. Spring Meeting: The minutes were signed and approved.

Matters arising: none,

AOB: none

Date of next meeting: Monday October 2014

Venue: possibly Castle House, Taunton (TBC)

1. Updates from regional reps:

Charlotte Berry, South Western Federation of Museums and Art Galleries

Charlotte had missed her first board meeting due to illness. The SW Fed conference will be held on 9th July 2014 at the American Museum, Bath. The theme was to be ‘What do the public really want?’ The latest edition of the newsletter will be on collections care with funding tips. The board has met with a consultant to look at its operations and delivery of services. Charlotte reminded everyone that membership of the SWFED was a good investment.

Vicky Dawson, South West Museums Development Partnership

The SWMDP secures money from the Arts Council. It is currently putting together a bid for 3 years, from April 2015-April 2018.

Steve Minnitt, South West Trust Heritage Trust update

Tom Mayberry gave an update on progress with the trust at the last MIS group meeting. On 12th March 2014 Devon County Council agreed to join in with the trust. 10 trustees were appointed with one more to come from Devon. Steve ran through the trustees’ names and range of expertise and knowledge. The trust was to look at its values and mission. The launch date was to be 1st October 2014. Tom Mayberry will be the chief executive. Mike Motum said that sub committees were being formed to look at areas such as marketing, HR etc. There is an advisory board to the board of trustees. The next stakeholder meeting is on 18th June 2014.

Rachel Bellamy & Liz Neathey, Museum Development Officer report

Small Grant, Big Improvement: 7 Somerset museums received funding, a total of £7,891, 25% of the SGB funding available for the region. These are for accredited museums or those working towards.

Rapid Retail: This funds museums to work with a specialist retail consultant to review their retail operations. Museums get an assessment tailored to their needs. They also get mentoring and support with implementation of changes to their retail operation. This project is from June to October 2014.

Digital Engagement Project:Consultants will come and work with museums to audit your online presence and develop a digital strategy. The aims are to help you undergo a shift in thinking, be inspired and enthused, have a transformative experience with doing something digitally. It is about ‘why’ rather than ‘how’ to use digital engagement.

South West Museums Visitor Focus

This project will work with a group of museums to help them understand their audiences and undertake an audience survey that will provide essential information needed to advocate, plan, budget and market more effectively. Up to 30 museums can take part (accredited and working towards accreditation). It will take place from June 2014 for 3months or longer. Museums will need 10,000 visitors + per annum. The on-line application forms are at The closing date is 28th May 2014.

South West Museums Sustainability Programme

To help museums understand, explain and implement ideas and practice around sustainabilityand resilience. Museums will explore how to use a range of tools and work with museum peers and mentors.

Somerset Learning Forum

The aim of the forum is to share and support information about learning in museums across Somerset. It is open to everyone. The first meeting was on 30th April 2014 and explored the new primary history curriculum. 15 delegates attended. Topics for future meetings include – advocacy, doing more for less, family learning and engagement. The next meeting will be in October 2014 in Weston-super-Mare museum.

Museums Development 2015 2018

An application by South West Museum Development Partnership is being made to Arts Council England. The application focusses on retaining: MDO’s, the CDO (Conservation Development Officer) and the Small Grants programme. The proposed offer is an increase in workforce development support and digital audiences development support. Also to continue to deliver accreditation advice pending the next application round. Go to

Annual returns 2013-2014

81% of museums have already submitted their return. This time last year was around 50%.

Somerset Routes

Liz showed some statistics as of 15th May 2014. 85% were return visits, 1% from London, 6% Bristol. There has been a steady pattern of visits to the website.

The Somerset MDO’s can be reached at:

1. Reports from member organisations:

Axbridge and District Museum Trust:

We are very pleased that the follow-up steps required in our accreditation have now been completed, which means we have complied with all outstanding issues and have been informed that we need do nothing further until 2017.

As I suggested last month we actually managed to balance the books this year, though it is very unlikely that the donations which helped us to do this will be repeated this year (we balance our books from April to end March). I also mentioned the minimising of our entry in the National Trust handbook. Since then we have installed an answer phone, which starts with a list of our opening times so members can get that information even when we are not on site. One of our Trustees gave the machine to the museum, so that has been done at zero cost, but we are still very worried about the number of visitors who will not come because of the NT action.

This month a temporary exhibition has been set up which shows some pictures of the building of the Cheddar Reservoir in the 1930s. Half a dozen professional quality pictures have appeared on a BBC web site, but we also have quite a few amateur pictures which were donated to us some time ago. They are supplemented by pictures of the Oak House Restaurant in the 1970s, given to the current proprietors by the owner at that time, who has, unfortunately, died recently, and some of Alan Ham’s (former Sedgemoor DC member) pictures lent to us by his widow, who is one of our custodians. We then have an art exhibition lined up for June and hope to display something about the local people at the time of WWI in July.

Just recently we have been given a Small Grant, Big Improvement award of £398.20p, from the SW Fed, to purchase a 21.5 inch digital frame along with some SDHC cards to use with it and a security lock. All but the security lock are now in my possession and I am working on creating some displays for it. I would like to thank Liz Neathey for her kind help with this; she turned my feeble effort into a much more professional application. This will be displayed on the ground floor so that it can be used by disabled visitors who cannot climb our medieval stairs and for displays about the structure and history of the building, freeing up valuable space for additional exhibits.

Wincanton Museum (not present):

We had re-opened last Spring and had around 800 visitors prior to closing at the end of September for the winter period. This year we opened again at the beginning of April and numbers are promising. We are open on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday mornings from 10 to 1. This autumn we will continue to open on Saturday mornings (only) throughout the winter. Our History Society continues to have a monthly lecture with a membership of 75.

Crewkerne & District Museum(not present):

Volunteers are concentrating their efforts on commemorating the beginning of World War 1 by holding two special exhibitions this season. The first, "Changing Times" will show what the town was like 100 years ago, before the war. A good collection of photographs and information about the town will be the backbone of this exhibition. It will be seen through the eyes of Herbert Denman, a tailor, who ran his business from the museum building. Visitors will be taken on a walk around the town and discover where people worked and shopped, where they went to school and the feel of the town before the war.

The second exhibition "Letters Home" will tell the stories of local men who served in the war and what happened to them. Letters from a soldier, a diary, individual tales of bravery and how the town acknowledged the war after will feature.

In addition the museum is applying for Heritage lottery funding to help the young people of the area commemorate the war through the study of animals in war. "Hooves, Paws and Claws" will recognise the contribution of various animals through work in schools and at the Heritage Centre to produce symbolic sculptures and models to remind us of another aspect of war. This project is currently being applied for and it hoped to begin it in June this year.

Fleet Air Arm Museum:

For visitor numbers we were on target for the year April 2013-March 2014, ending with 110,843, 3000 up on last year. This year has got off to a good start with April numbers 264 above last April’s.

The Robot Wars event was very popular. The archive film evening for Museums at Night was well received, though not well attended, with an audience of 45. You all missed a treat! There’s a busy week coming up. Over the next Bank Holiday weekend we have an International Radio-Controlled Air Show on Sunday and Monday. On Wednesday 28th May the Museum celebrates its 50th Birthday – with a mini-exhibition and a birthday tea. FAAM will also have a presence at the Bath and West Show next week. On Sunday 15th June, there’s a Father’s Day Special. Our World War One exhibition opens on 3rd July. Air Day isn’t the Museum, but it’s on 26th July. Daleks invade us again 16th & 17th August. On 13th September we’re holding a WW1 Naval Records day aimed at family historians, with talks/ask the experts/tours of the document store. Our Reserve Store Open Day will be 23rd October, followed on 25th by the Autumn Model Day and then ‘Spies and Special Ops’ from 27th-31st for half-term. There will be an autumn exhibition to commemorate the RNAS air raid on the Zeppelin hangars at Friedrichshafen – the first ever strategic bombing raid, and a Christmas exhibition to commemorate the Cuxhaven Raid. Christmas Day 1914 might have seen soldiers coming out of trenches to play football, but the RNAS didn’t stop for a Christmas truce – they bombed the Zeppelin base at Cuxhaven.

The National Museum of the Royal Navy restructuring has seen some redundancies, but we are strong enough to face our next 50 years.

Alfred Gillett Trust:

There have been 3 new members of staff. The trust has put together a permanent exhibition in the foyer of the open air swimming pool which has a link to the family. The Grange is doing well on room hire promoting a new range in the downstairs rooms. The trust have loaned some shoes to No 1 The Crescent, Bath. The trust has received external advice from Reading University. This is an appraisal of the business archive. An appraisal of the shoe collection is to be done by a specialist. Contact has been made with Belgian descendants of refugees who had lived in Street. Natalie Watson manages the digitisation project. Shoes were being photographed and entered onto a database which shoe designers can use. The project will last 2-3 years. An audio-visual collection project is coming to an end and will be coming back from London. A photography agency is to be employed next year. There will be a project to create a catalogue of shoes to be digitised with text recognition. There is to be a transfer of collections database from access to Adlib of 80,000 records. Natalie has been busy cleaning data.

Somerset Heritage Service:

The Rural Life Museum is now closed and is empty. The project is going out to tender shortly. Building works start in September. The storyline, design and fit out will be done in-house. A couple of new members of staff will be taken on. Attention on the Brick and Tile Museum will happen in the future. ‘’Somerset Remembers’ will mark the centenary of World War One. One of the highlights is the number of volunteers involved in it. There is a service level agreement with Weston Museum and travelling exhibition on WW1 will be shown there. The Museum of Somerset in Taunton has had about 67,000 visitors and is going well. They are looking at a range of new events for the future. The service is acquiring new material for exhibitors trying to raise money for a piece of Saxon sculpture from Dawlish Wake. It was found marking the grave of a cat called Winkle! The stone had gone to Sothebys and been bought by a private collector as there had not been enough time to bid for it and raise the money.