Colne Valley Museum Cliffe Ash, Golcar Huddersfield HD7 4PY 01484 659762
Reg. Charity No. 1106550 www.colnevalleymuseum.org.uk Accredited Museum No. 1203 [email protected] Annual Reports
to AGM April 2018
Chairman’s Report April 2018
Another year of increased activity, following the generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Who would have believed that we would ever finish the project, but with the help of many, the end is in sight. Fortunately, the grant was sufficient to cover unexpected extras. This has allowed us to fit new windows and have the roof fixed - that took us by surprise as the first building survey missed these problems. We now have a museum to be proud of and it should be better than ever for use in the future.
We are so fortunate to have an amazing group of volunteers who have worked tirelessly to fulfil the many tasks involved in this major project. I would like to thank all of you for your support over the last few years. I would like to thank Janet Jobber in particular, as she has taken the overall responsibility for seeing the project through and has shown remarkable fortitude and persistence.
There are many others that have done a superb job in sorting out what we needed, getting grants, moving stock, keeping our finances in order, and deciding where everything will go.
We should now be confident that the museum is good for another 40+ years at least. We still need your support and that of any new volunteers who you can encourage to join the museum.
E. Roger Fielding (Chairman)
The Treasurer’s Annual Report and Financial Statement for Colne Valley Museum 2017 -18 will be available at the AGM on Thursday May 17th at 7.30pm at the Golcar Scout & Community Centre, Manor Road, Golcar.
Copies are also available by email.
Please contact Janet Jobber on: [email protected] or send an A5 stamped addressed envelope to:
Colne Valley Museum, Cliffe Ash, Golcar, Huddersfield HD7 4PY
Annual Report on the Heritage Lottery Project
The programme timetable for the project ended officially on December 31st 2017 after three years of concentrated effort from our team of 60+ volunteers. As I write, all the documents required by the HLF to release the final 10% of the funds have been submitted on time to our grants officer in the Yorkshire and the Humber office in Leeds. This included our Evaluation Report on the progress of the project which was driven by the collection of survey reports from visitors by the (gentle) persistence of volunteers. A copy of the report will be made available for anyone interested to read it in the office and we are looking into how we can make it available on line. Once the documents have been cleared the final payment will be made and we can then repay the loan that we received from Keyfund.
The final year of the project has been busy to say the least, with volunteers not only completing HLF tasks but also dealing with the day to day running of the museum, the regular openings and events and the schools and group meetings. It was pleasing to see additions to our group visits with young people with physical and learning difficulties, residents from a local care home and youngsters from the Scout and Guide movement all coming and enjoying their time at the museum. Another positive development was that we have been visited by many people for the first time, due for the most part to good coverage in the press and advertisements placed in magazines e.g. The Dalesman.
The delays that were caused by the roof repairs created time pressure on the training programme but we were able successfully to train spinners, weavers, clog makers and corn dolly makers as part of our aim to ensure that we have volunteers who can demonstrate these skills to our visitors. The collection team undertook training in the conservation of our costume collection and completed the enormous task of the packing and orderly storage of the costume collection in its new space in the corner of the bedroom.
The new museum website is taking shape and will be launched in the near future. This is one part of the project that has been badly delayed by the ongoing building work because it was not possible to create the photographs that will be added. However, work has started on the task of recording items from our whole collection in a digital format and this will be an on-going task for some time.
Amidst all the work we did find time to celebrate. Dame Ingrid Roscoe, the Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire, paid us a return visit in October to see what we have
achieved since her last visit at the end of the HLF project in ‘the chip shop’. The Mayor of Kirklees, Cllr Christine Iredale and her consort, Robert Iredale, also joined the guests who included our friends from Museum Development Yorkshire, the contractors and professional people who have worked with us and long standing members of the museum, most of whom were ‘ in at the beginning’ in 1970. It was a very pleasant afternoon and we received many compliments from our guests.
In December forty volunteers enjoyed a celebratory dinner at the Golcar Lily with another eighteen attending a lunch in January at the same venue. It was good to enjoy a meal together and remember the trials of the project but also laugh at the things that did not go quite to plan but worked out well in the end.
The project has been quite an experience, with highs and lows, downright exasperating at times, but in the end we have a museum and an organisation that is in good heart as we approach our 50th Anniversary. On behalf of the HLF team, I can only give our sincere thanks to our amazing volunteers who lived up to our motto ‘Voluntary but not Amateur’.
Janet Jobber
Membership Report 2018
2017 2018
Subscriptions paid 80 57
Life Members 7 7
Honorary Members 11 10
2017 Subscriptions 119 262 outstanding
TOTAL MEMBERS 217 336
It is good for our museum to be fully open again. 2018 is likely to be a year when we start to understand what a difference all the work that has been undertaken on the museum will show results as our membership stabilising.
If anyone is not sure if they have paid or not, please contact me and I will be pleased to update you with your membership details. Similarly, please do keep me updated with your personal details so I send messages to the right destination.
It is lovely we are welcoming new members most weekends and lovely to see familiar faces. May I take the opportunity to thank you to everyone for continuing your support and say a big ‘Hello’ to our new members.
Hilary Richards
Membership Secretary
Lifelong Learning Report 2017
During 2017
20 schools visited.
5 uniform organisations
5 visits from a local retirement home
11 social visits from adult groups
2 visits from young adults day centres
The team continues to grow in strength and we have 15 members helping regularly.
As we expected the number of school visits has dropped. We have employed Amy Baggaley to produce new activity days for us.
As well as the Victorian experience day we can now offer: Votes for Women! (the history of women’s suffrage); Weavers at War (World War 1); Local History Explorers (finding out about the people who lived in the cottages); and STEAM, focusing on Science, Technology, English, Art and Maths. These can be half or full day sessions. A new teacher’s leaflet has been produced detailing these activities.
We also helped with the 4 children's activity days in August.
Sue Starr
Children’s activity Teacher’s leaflet
Shows Report 2017 – it wasn’t always a mudbath . . . . .
That’s not to say anyone who attended the Honley and Penistone shows got away without at least slipping and sliding when trying to find the Colne Valley Museum stall. Fortunately at both venues our stall is in a marquee so the volunteers were largely unscathed.
In 2017 we attended 10 events mostly in and around Kirklees at venues we have attended in the past. We continue to develop good relationships with the Honley and Penistone agricultural shows and Kirklees Council with their Oakwell Hall event.
Sadly the Rotarian Charity Fair and the Lace Fair at Pudsey were visited for the final time but this has opened up new possibilities. During 2018 we will be found at the Steampunk Festival in Hebden Bridge in July and Honley Feast in September.
If you know of any events we could attend, either later in 2018 or for 2019 please speak to Mark Ager or Julie Dempster.
Mark Ager
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Volunteer Co-ordinator’s Report 2018
A changing year for all volunteers, who came back to a renewed museum with additional goals and aspirations. Early training schedules, to comply with objectives set out in the HLF bid offered volunteers additional skills and interests. The evaluation sessions and forward plan were useful tools for progress. We have recruited steadily and welcomed 5 new volunteers for the clogshop- we’ll need a rota soon! Volunteer Dementia Training
A recent intensive volunteer recruitment drive was very successful and we look forward to seeing them at an induction meeting. New recruits - 10 female , 3 male
Our museum ‘pink passes’ enable us to visit other establishments, an ideal way to advertise our own heritage and success.
Present volunteer numbers, including new arrivals. Female 65, Male 23
Lesley Crawshaw Margaret Woodcock
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Tea Room report 2018
What a winter! However, even though we lost five opening days because of snow the Tea Room is doing GREAT thanks to our brilliant team. I am honoured to thank you all and especially those who make those delicious cakes which are very popular with visitors and volunteers alike.**
The venture into selling soup and a roll on bread bake weekends has been hit and miss, but it is all to try for (and any other ideas are welcome.) In a bid to reduce our use of plastic we have decided to stop selling juice in individual plastic bottles and will in future offer Fentiman’s fruit drinks (in glass bottles) or diluted squash.
My thanks also to Ruth Sheldrake who converts my hand written rotas into Word documents.
Due to time commitments I need to step down from organising the Tea Room team and if anyone would like to consider taking on the role please contact me – lots of training/assistance given!
Anne Hodge
**Cakes needed for Golcar Lily Day May 12th
Shop Report April 2018.
Visits from schools continue to boost income for the shop, and we have also supplied schools with our weaving and pom pom kits for children to use in the classroom, which have proved very popular. Rug kits also sell very well, however we struggle to maintain a supply of material to make them up.
This year we have attended 12 outdoor shows, which is slightly less than last year. The decision was made to concentrate on the more important ones, bearing in mind our volunteers have sometimes spent all day for very little profit. We are planning to visit some new shows this time to see how they do. We value the time people give and want them to feel it is worth their while to give up their day.
Pauline Ellis.
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Publicity & Marketing Report 2017 -18
It has been a very busy year for the Publicity team – not only did our workload increase with the extra opportunities for advertising, courtesy of the HLF grant, but we have also been working on the new website, plus of course all the usual work we do advertising events and exhibitions etc. David Pawson has produced over 6,000 bookmarks (advertising upcoming events) this last year!
Readers of the Dalesman and Down Your Way will (I hope) have noticed our presence and we have featured in a range of tourism magazines including the Welcome to Yorkshire journal and their Heritage Guide, the Visitor Guide to Yorkshire, Yorkshire Signpost, The Yorkshire Herald & Advertiser, as well as the online versions. The Huddersfield Library and Railway station have been regularly supplied with bookmarks and leaflets.
Trying to attract visitors from a wider range of audiences we also advertised in the Mumbles magazine (for mums and toddlers) and placed an advert for our half term activities in the BBC History journal.
Another promotional feature we took part in was a Leading Ladies article in the April issue of Yorkshire Life – executed with a lot of laughter and tongue-in-cheek replies to the questionnaire – I seem to remember ‘chocolate’ featured a lot!
We have worked very closely with our website designer, who is determined we can edit it at will and thus take full responsibility for it as well as using social media, which our newest member of the team, Julie Dempster, has promised to shake into submission. The new website will include a slideshow of our newly refurbished Museum plus a password protected link for members to access minutes of meetings etc.
(Sneak preview of the new website)
Designs for our new Museum leaflets and guide are almost complete, but like the website, we have been waiting for building work in the Museum to finish so we can take up to date photographs. We are also hoping to produce a small range of postcards for the shop.
If anyone knows of venues where we can put up posters or leave our leaflets please let me know. My thanks to the rest of the team, who have learned to dance on a shifting carpet this last year and still produce the goods!
Anne Lord
Collection Team report 2018
The Collection team have attended training days for textile/costume conservation and digital photography, and have been beavering away in the store rooms putting into practice all they have learned repacking and recording the Museum’s diverse Collections. New acid free storage boxes, plus trolleys to move them about, have made the job much easier. Unwanted cardboard storage/document boxes have been passed on to another museum, as well as unwanted artefacts. Photographs of the collection will be accessible from our new website.
Work on the Costume Collection is now finished, having been checked for damage, catalogued and put into new covers and stored in the new costume storage room. The team has had the help from two students from Huddersfield University, Sadie Goode and Grace Chapman (Grace will be holding an exhibition later this year in the Museum). Both of them have been really useful members of the team and we hope they have gained benefits from being involved.
My thanks are due to everyone who came in to help with this massive task, both on our regular Thursday morning meetings or just odd days when time could be spared – it all made an invaluable contribution and we can see light at the end of the tunnel – our next task is to start on the (considerable) Linen Collection.
Members of the team have sourced items for the period rooms, courtesy of the Heritage Lottery Fund, and we are still searching for a Victorian wooden towel rail for the bedroom.
The team plan to visit other museums to share best practice – a trip to Calderdale Industrial Museum is next on our list.
Finally, we have lost two members of the team this year and if anyone is interested in looking after the many collections of the Museum or would like to be involved in any way please let me or our Volunteers Co-ordinator know.
Anne Hodge
Clockwise from top. Anne demonstration cleaning delicate textiles. Packing of delicate artefacts (the rabbit volunteered!). Victoria learning the mysteries of depth of field. Waiting in the rain.