28/08/2020
A quick update about the Museum Service
As you may know it has been a hugely challenging time for Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, with the Covid-19 crisis having a devastating impact on its resources, and consequently its ability to provide services such as ours.
A strategic review looked at a number of services run by the Foundation, including the Museum Service.
The Museum service comprises (1) the Garden City Collection, accredited by the Arts Council with over 250,000 objects relating to the history of Letchworth and Garden Cities; (2) the Museum at One Garden City, our ‘micro museum’ which opened in the building that also houses HF head office in June 2019 and showcases that collection and explores the social history of the town; and (3) The International Garden Cities Exhibition, a visitor centre and display located in the 1907 Arts & Crafts building designed by Barry Parker & Raymond Unwin as their drawing offices.
Sadly we have had to change the way we operate and are funded, with the team reduced to a single post along with a new urgent need for the service to cover its costs, via income generation and external fundraising.
We started this year in fantastic shape – securely funded, a clear strategy, exciting plans, a happy team, some freshly-won awards – and this change in circumstance has obviously been devastating.
Whilst this has been a heartbreaking process, we hope this can eventually be an opportunity for the service. We want to create a truly participatory service, with a really direct relationship with – and content co-curated by – you, our community, the fine people of this wonderful town (both past and present) (hello, Letchworth diaspora!).
In these trying times, we have been extremely grateful to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, to whom we applied for and successfully received some much-needed emergency funding to cover some activity for the remainder of 2020. We are also hugely grateful to both SHARE Museums East and Hertfordshire Association of Museums for some earlier funding which allowed us to begin to pick that path forward.
We’re sorry we haven’t been able to communicate this in more detail up until now, but we felt we shouldn’t do so while the strategic review and staff consultations were taking place.
We are looking forward to safely welcoming you back to The Museum at One Garden City later in September, and hope you will take the opportunity to come and see what we have on display, whether you’re returning or visiting for the first time…
Hopefully you'll have noticed we have been trying to maintain a strong presence on social media - we love to share the rich history of this unique town as widely as possible, and have been so very encouraged by the great response our recent output has been receiving.
We absolutely welcome any future ideas, both for sharing online and in the physical space in our micro museum, and hope to be able to share some initiatives for you to get more formally involved in the coming weeks and months.
We are your museum. We’re here to tell your stories and celebrate our town.
We don’t have a huge grand building with pillars and porticoes, but we do have a huge and fascinating collection of objects, plans, photographs and ephemera.
We do have a compact and family-friendly display space at our free micro museum.
And we continue to care for and look after the unique building on Norton Way South.
We want to tell everyone’s stories. If you want to help us tell your story of Letchworth Garden City, we want to hear from you.
We may need to ask for your help in the future.
And we definitely want to work with you on content and activities moving forward. Get in touch, or just watch this space, for details of how.
And keep clicking, liking, commenting & sharing, and visiting in person, and keep being interested in this wonderful town...