Suggestions?

The committee of the Friends have had a very positive meeting with the new Director Jo Jones. We talked about ways that the Friends can get involved with the museum, not just financially, but practically. Ways in which the ideas from the community can make a real impact upon what is in the museum and what happens there.

Ideas like the People’s Case, the Picture of the Month, a return to a more mixed and vigorous exhibition programme, more regular changes in the permanent displays and better marketing, these have all been met with enthusiasm. Moves like this answer many of the criticisms that we heard from people during the “Save the Museum” campaign. But to make them and other ideas happen needs input from everyone.

When you signed the petition in 2009 or joined the Friends, you were moved to register your anger or your support, now we need to hear your voice again, come to the Social in September, write to the Newsletter or email MuseumFriends@HerneBayMatters.com

Ideas wanted, comments required and suggestions sought.

Jenny Cross, Chair

July 2011

Jo Jones says hello

I have been in post as Director of Museums and Galleries for Canterbury City Council for five weeks and am really enjoying my new job. I feel very privileged to be working in a beautiful part of the country with such committed and knowledgeable staff, stakeholders and partners, including the Friends of Herne Bay Museum. Thank you to all the Friends who made me so welcome at the 'Not The End of The Pier' exhibition opening at the Museum on 5th July.

Previously I was Arts and Cultural Services Manager for Museums and Galleries for Sefton MBC, based in Southport, Merseyside. I led on the museum and gallery aspect of The Atkinson, a £16 million project to combine three Grade Two Listed buildings and integrate a gallery, museum, library and theatre. This new cultural facility will open in 2013.

One of my priorities for Canterbury district is to create a shared vision for the museum and gallery service with staff and stakeholders. A strategy for the service will also be developed and I am very keen that this is accompanied by an action plan with dates for achieving improvements to the service so that progress can be monitored.

I had a very positive meeting with the committee of Friends of Herne Bay Museum on 7th July. It was evident that the Friends have a number of good ideas and I am looking forward to our staff and the Friends working together to develop the Museum.

At the King’s Hall

The annual Projects and Business Exhibition at the Kings Hall, on the 9th of March was well attended with the Friends stall attracting a good deal of interest.

We gave out lots of membership forms and people were keen to enter the prize draw, for this they had to fill in a questionnaire.

The winner of the prize draw was Angela Furlong who was excited to receive her hamper and is now a member.

As a greater part of the aim of the Friends is to encourage an increased level of community and town involvement in the museum, then we need to know what people’s interests and talents are. We need to know what the museum can do for you and what you can do for the museum - do please tell us.

You're a collector too

You may think of collecting as a specialised activity, rare and valuable items in glass cases or velvet lined drawers, but collecting, although it can be like this, is something much broader and something peculiar to the human species.

With the possible exception of Mynah birds and jackdaws, no other creature fetishises objects in the way we do, no other creature manufactures objects in the way we do either and I suspect that the one activity is an integral part of the other. Since early man first recognised one stick as more useful than another or one stone more suitable than another, we have been on the track of comparing, sorting, categorising, selecting, possessing, adapting, and manufacturing; in a word, collecting.

So although you might think you don't collect anything, (and by this you mean you don't trek off to antique markets and boot fairs in search of Staffordshire cow creamers) you almost certainly do, you wouldn't be human if you didn't.

Collecting can and does include the things you use, most activities involve collections of some sort. Cooking, DIY, car maintenance, sport, gardening and making music, all demand collections of specialised tools and equipment. Many people hoard magazines; that's a collection. Keeping all your receipts for an accountant... that's an archive.

If you think about it you do collect (records? CDs? Photographs?), it's just that you don't associate the activity with what museums do, but any of those collections of workaday items, given a few years, become items of historical interest. Even without the addition of years, people's collections are interesting. They tell us about lives and life and others' experience and that's one of the things that museums are for.

So before dismissing the idea of a People's Case as nothing to do with you, think about it for a bit.

Get in touch with us at MuseumFriends@HerneBayMatters.com or write to FOHBM Newsletter 1, Mickleburgh Hill, Herne Bay CT6 6AA.

We want to hear about your collections and we want you to make an exhibition of yourself, with our help of course.

David Cross, Secretary

May 2011

The People's Case

In principal, the idea of a People's Case has been approved by museum staff, this will be a display case where people can apply to show their own collections or items of interest.

In Whitstable in the early nineties the museum ran a People's Show on the same basis, it was one of the most popular shows the service ever ran.

There were collections of fossils and the kind of things one might expect in a museum, but there was also the unexpected: a collection of Homepride flour graders, a collection of veteran microphones, Star Wars figurines, tea towels from around the world, egg cups, a vast collection of cigarette packets.

So we are appealing to all you collectors out there, members and non-members alike to come forward and share your passion.