Heritage Services Annual Review 2016/17 For learning, inspiration and enjoyment 2016 /17 at a glance Introduction 2016/17 was another exceptionally busy Numbers year for Heritage Services. The marketing strategy in the five-year business plan to Income (turnover) promote the shoulder months has £18,279,000 resulted in record off-season attendances at the Roman Baths and, as a result, all-time high annual visitor Surplus before internal overheads £6,584,000 numbers. 11% of these were Mandarin speakers, a result of sustained marketing to China in partnership with Visit Britain. Net profit per Heritage staff member £45,000 At the Fashion Museum, the exquisite exhibition A History of Fashion in 100 Net profit per B&NES resident £36 Objects showcasing stunning items from the museum collection has proved popular, leading to a rise in visitor Net profit per B&NES Council Tax payer numbers on the previous year. This effect £83 was further enhanced with the opening • 1,123,633 Roman Baths visitors (a record) of Lace in Fashion in February 2017, while • 153,593 Victoria Art Gallery visitors another top quality exhibition programme • 93,619 Fashion Museum visitors at the Victoria Art Gallery has kept visitor • 34,362 people attended learning sessions and community events numbers above the 150,000 mark. • 50,003 guests at civic and private functions Loans from the Victoria Art Gallery and • 623,892 shop items sold (up 44,663 on 2015/16) the Fashion Museum to major exhibitions elsewhere attest the importance of the collections we hold in trust for the public and promote our museums to national Awards and international audiences. The Roman Baths: The award of £3.375 million by the Visit England Tourism Excellence Awards Heritage Lottery Fund was a major step Large Visitor Attraction of the Year – Runner up towards realising the Archway Project, of South West Tourism Excellence Awards which more can be found on p.15 below. • Large Visitor Attraction of the Year – Gold Community engagement across the • Best International Visitor Experience – Silver Service has been as strong as ever with inspiring public activities organised for Bristol Bath & Somerset Tourism Excellence Awards World Heritage Day, Museums at Night, • Best International Visitor Experience – Gold Festival of Archaeology, British Science • Large Visitor Attraction of the Year – Gold Week, national Heritage Open Days and UK Wedding Awards 2017: our own Museums Week. • Best Historic Venue – GOLD for the Roman Baths The Roman Baths’ visitor experience has • Best City Venue – GOLD for the Assembly Rooms been further enhanced with improved lighting and new interpretation in the East Baths. Other significant projects Grants completed during the year included Bath Record Office’s HLF-funded community Archway Project: outreach work with the Riverside Youth • £3,375,800 awarded for 2017-19 – Heritage Lottery Fund; Hub and the Black Families Educational • £75,000 to the Roman Baths Foundation – Garfield Weston Foundation; Support Group, and the submission to • £250,000 awarded to the Roman Baths Foundation – Clore Duffield Foundation. Government of the World Heritage Site Fashion Museum: Management Plan 2016-2022. These • £2,000 from South West Museum Development for storage improvements; two projects, along with many others, • £5,000 from The Costume Society for conservation work. have typified the local-to-global span of work undertaken through our services Victoria Art Gallery: during the year. • £2,394 from the Gallery Friends for curatorial research; • £2,923 from the Gallery Friends for new acquisitions. Bath Record Office: • £33,137 from The National Cataloguing Grants Scheme for Archives; • £5,000 from The Medlock Charitable Trust for roadshow displays, community Stephen Bird, Head of Heritage Services activities and family history courses; • £2,935 from The Wellcome Trust for a conservation needs survey. 2 Foreword by Councillor Patrick Anketell-Jones, Cabinet Member for Economic Development 21st century Bath will draw on its past to intellectual pursuits to entertain and define its future and it could not do advance the enlightenment of English better. Economies drive and shape society. Protected and curated by society and over time they bequeath Heritage Services, here is the evidence distinctive legacies. Bath has inherited that throws light onto the coming era of extraordinary riches from the economic economic expansion. activity of our forebears, giving the city a unique and unrivalled identity. This new growth will be built around people and knowledge. Previously, Today, cities face rapid change driven by economic activity developed on or near new technology. The way we use time, the location of a material resource but purchase goods and generally order our modern society is mobile and so is its lives is evolving in parallel with knowledge. Future business will grow in technological advances and, through places where people perform best and these changes, we have the opportunity quality of life is a determinant of to reassess the relationship between economic choice. Bath’s long history people and their cities. demonstrates repeatedly that it was built – and rebuilt – to elevate the The heritage of Bath tells us that cities experience of living. The appeal of that Heritage Services remind us that we can be very successful and work best idea is still relevant and will influence our live in one of the most civilised when they are understood and well modern economy. environments in the world. From this we managed. As an arena for social activity, reap rich rewards that we must never in Aquae Sulis the Romans placed huge Heritage Services’ staff, through their take for granted. emphasis on wellbeing, socialising, good vision and dedication, are the keepers order and lawfulness. Georgians of Bath’s interpretation. It is not simply understood the value of a place that about entertainment and tourism. By could bring together social, physical and investing, presenting and educating, CEO of the National Autistic Society Mark Lever, portfolio holder Cllr Anketell-Jones, Visitor Services Manager Katie Smith and Chair of Council Cllr Alan Hale at the launch of the Society’s new Autism Friendly Awards at the Roman Baths. 3 Fashion Museum Exhibitions: On-line: Lace in Fashion opened in February The Museum continues to connect with 2017, with more than 50 beautiful a world-wide audience by sharing dresses from the Museum collection and images and information about objects in private lenders showing how lace has the collection through on-line media, been used in fashion, from a trimming on including Twitter and Facebook and, for a 1500s smock to today’s glamorous red the first time this year, Pinterest. carpet dresses made entirely from lace. This is the first in a new series of thematic On-tour: exhibitions to complement the This year the Museum loaned items to chronological view of fashion offered in major exhibitions in the UK and overseas. the headline exhibition A History of These included a jacquard-woven denim Fashion in 100 Objects. suit by Jean-Paul Gaultier to Winchester Discovery Centre, two grand 18th Events: century court mantuas to an exhibition at The year’s programme offered practical the Barbican Art Gallery, London, which workshops and ‘backstage tours’ in the then transferred to the Winterpalais, summer months and ‘twilight talks’ Vienna; and a Christian Dior New Look across the autumn/winter. Highlights of suit to Chatsworth in Derbyshire. the year included talks from Professor Carol Tulloch for Black History Month in Dress of the Year 2016 is a pair of outfits Top left: Lace in Fashion exhibition curator October 2016 and from Soïzic Pfaff, by leading British designer J W Elly Summers with fashion designer Jacques Chief Archivist at Dior, for the 70th Anderson, selected for the Museum by Azagury who opened the exhibition. anniversary of the New Look in February Kate Phelan of British Vogue. Top right: Man’s purple hopsack jacket, 2017, as well as a class in partnership Mr Fish, 1968, in A History of Fashion in with the Royal School of Needlework Rosemary Harden, 100 Objects exhibition. based on the earliest embroidered man’s Fashion Museum Manager Above: Bath Knitting & Crochet Guild activity shirt in the Museum, dating from at World-Wide Knit in Public Day 2016 ca.1600. organised by the Fashion Museum. 4 Above left: Dr Philip Bendall launches the Bath Burial Index which he created for the Record Office website. Left: Black Families Educational Support Group student researching the history of black people in Bath. Above: Archivists Lucy Powell and Colin Johnston at the Record Office roadshow at South Stoke village fête, July 2016. Bath Record Office In 2016 we successfully concluded our Hinton Charterhouse and Weston, with For the first time many of our historic 15-month HLF-funded cataloguing and locally-themed displays and children’s maps became available on-line in the outreach project Our Heritage, Your activities. In February 2017 we culmination of an HLF-funded web- Story: explore the past with Bath Record participated in a World War I based mapping project Know Your Place Office. Major cataloguing work was commemorative event in Queen Square in which we collaborated with completed on Bath’s vast collection of with a display of related images from our neighbouring Councils in Bristol, South Council records dating from 1189 to the archive collections. The archivist gave Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire, North present day, with the aid of over 25 nine lectures to local community groups Somerset, Somerset, and Wiltshire. specially recruited and trained volunteers on a range of aspects of Bath’s history who undertook sorting, listing and data and was interviewed on BBC Radio We loaned seven architectural drawings entry, also re-packaging and cleaning of Bristol to publicize events for the Record to the Museum of Bath Architecture for archive documents.