Annual General Meeting 2024
The Isles of Scilly Museum Association AGM will be held at 7pm on Thursday 17 October 2024 in the meeting room at the Porthmellon Enterprise Centre.
Supporting Documents:
Success at the Cornwall Heritage Awards for the Isles of Scilly Museum and its partners.
The GRAND BALL OF ROSEVEAR community arts project won the Collaboration Award which was accepted by Artistic Director Bec Applebee. Congratulations to all those who made the project such a success: St Mary's Theatre Club, Five Islands Academy, Scilly Sirens, The Lyonesse Quilters, Piers Lewin and The Barnacles, the team at the Old Town Inn, all the wonderful volunteers and artists, local and guest, who ensured such a high standard of work. The project was funded by the Arts Council England and co-ordinated by Culture on Scilly. The award is dedicated to the memory of Alfred Hicks whose stories and memories were such an inspiration for the project. Other awards included Leader of the Year for Co-Chairs Marthe Broadhurst and Ann Tudor who rose to the challenge of leading the organisation at such a critical time and Jeremy Brown and Tammy Bedford were proclaimed as Heritage Heroes for all the strategic and fundraising work they have done behind the scenes to ensure the survival of the Museum over the last five years. Daisy Stevens was highly commended for her amazing work as a volunteer and a key member of the Young Curator’s club and the Grand Ball of Rosevear quilt came very close to winning the public vote for Object of the Year. Well done all.
AIM PILGRIM TRUST COLLECTION CARE GRANT
We are delighted to report that we have received funding to adapt a 20ft shipping container for Museum temporary storage. This will help to facilitate the decant from the old Museum to allow for the Town Hall to be redeveloped into the New Isles of Scilly Cultural Centre and Museum. The environmental conditions are controlled by having used insulation, bespoke shelving and electrical air conditioning. The conditions are monitored via data loggers. We would like to thank our funders for supporting us in this venture.
Scillonian Magazine archives to be digitised
The Isles of Scilly Museum is delighted to announce that it has been selected for an SDS Heritage philanthropy award, which will allow us to begin the process of digitising back copies of the remarkable and unique Scillonian magazine. The Scillonian magazine was first published in 1925 and has chronicled life on the Isles of Scilly ever since.
The award allows for the design and creation of a bespoke, interactive website which will enable interested parties from all over the world to access and search the printed material.
With the addition of a generous legacy to the Museum by former volunteer and researcher Usch Schweer, we will be able to digitise issues 1-87 (March 1925 to Michaelmas 1946).
Many thanks to SDS for this wonderful opportunity, to the Scillonian editorial team Clive Mumford and Beth Hilton for their support and advice, and to our regular visitor Prof. William Richardson who first brokered the idea.
There will be an opportunity to sponsor the digitisation of further issues in the hope that we could possibly complete the process for the magazine’s Centenary in 2025…
Watch this space!
Extraordinary discovery about the wonderful Bryher Sword and Mirror which are on permanent display at the Isles of Scilly Museum.
An international team of scientists has re-analysed the prehistoric burial, which has puzzled archaeologists since it was discovered on the island of Bryher in 1999.
The grave is unique in Iron Age western Europe for containing both a mirror and a sword.
This is highly unusual because, in other burials of the same period, swords are normally found with males and mirrors with females – yet this single grave contained both objects and the remains of just one person.
Attempts to establish sex by traditional methods, such as DNA analysis, failed due to the disintegration of the bones.
Debate continued for years until recent scientific advances, in particular the development of a sophisticated technique by scientists at the University of California at Davis.
The research findings are published today in The Journal of Archaeological Science Reports and show the individual was female.
Isles of Scilly Museum 2023 AGM 7pm 27th July
The Isles of Scilly Museum Association AGM is to be held at 7pm on 27th July 2023.
Supporting Documents:
Project Director appointed for Town Hall Cultural Centre and Museum Project
Following the successful application to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and a grant secured for the Town Hall Cultural Centre and Museum project, the Council are pleased to appoint Neil Richardson as Project Director. Neil was selected for his wealth of experience in leading and delivering cultural and heritage projects and will bring both knowledge and enthusiasm to the project over the next 12 months.
New trustees announced at crucial time for Isles of Scilly Museum
In October 2022, the Isles of Scilly Museum formally appointed three new trustees to their board. Ann Tudor, Joseph Payne and Dr Robert Lambert join the seven existing volunteers, bringing a diverse range of expertise to the charity at a busy time. The Isles of Scilly Museum, which opened in 1967, was closed in 2019 due to structural issues; however, new plans are in development to work with the Council of the Isles of Scilly in the creation of a new Museum and Cultural Centre.
Isles of Scilly set to reimagine local history with ‘Grand Ball’
The Isles of Scilly are gearing up to revive a legendary moment in local history, by recreating the ‘Grand Ball of Rosevear’ this March. Cornwall-based theatre practitioner and producer Bec Applebee has teamed up with the Isles of Scilly Museum to stage a range of events, creative activities and projects starting in early spring, including a ‘Grand Ball’ dance on St Mary’s with original music, a new production from the St Mary’s Theatre Club and a range of community workshops, all enabled through funding from Arts Council England.
MUSEUM FEATURED ON ISLANDS FM AND COMMUNITY RADIO ACROSS THE SOUTHWEST
The Isles of Scilly Museum will feature in a series of broadcasts on Scilly’s Islands FM, as well as other community radio stations across the south-west in the coming weeks.
The programme will be broadcast as part of the Futures 2022 festival, celebrating community radio and university research. It features many voices from the Isles of Scilly and Professor Jane Wills from Exeter University, talking about the close relationships between visitors and residents on the islands, the museum, and the plans for the new museum and cultural centre.
You can find more about the programme here.
It will be broadcast on Islands FM on Saturday 1st October 2022 at 9.45am. It will also be shared on a network of community radio stations other the coming weeks.
Completion of Museum Collections Audit
We are pleased to report that we have completed a Collections Audit and that whilst there is much work to do to ensure the long term safety of our collection there is nothing that is in imminent danger. The audit will be used to support applications being made for the New Museum and Cultural Centre. Thanks must go to Sarah Cove for such a thorough piece of work. The collections audit was conducted with the aid of a grant from the AIM Pilgrim Trust Conservation Scheme and we would also like to thank them for their much appreciated support.
Museum to use Town Hall reception for exhibits and shop
We are moving! The Council have kindly allowed us to use the Town Hall when Covid restrictions are lifted.
Please read the press release on the Council website for more details: https://scilly.gov.uk/news/museum-use-town-hall-reception-exhibits-and-shop
5th Feburary 2021
We have been featured in The Guardian! Read the article here.
29th September 2020
Thanks to all our friends and supporters for your donations and well-wishes for the future.
Since lockdown was relaxed, we have been able to get back to the rather sad job of packing up the Museum. We have struggled through with reduced staff and greatly missed our volunteers who were unable to safely join us. We have now managed to pack up around 90% of the Museum’s collections. A process of checking, mending, cleaning, wrapping, and logging 8,500 items has been ongoing throughout the summer. We are grateful to Richard Hand and his team for fitting us into their busy weekly schedule and coordinating some tricky removals, so that soon, we should have everything stored in either the Porthmellon Enterprise Centre or the Town Hall which were made accessible to us in July. The last thing to come out will be the Klondyke gig, which will be heading for a new temporary home in the Wesleyan Chapel. That should be an event in itself!
Whilst the closure, vacating and future demolition of our much-loved Museum is a bleak story, there are also some positive and potentially exciting developments afoot. A successful application to the wAVE and Voucher Scheme funding programmes has allowed us to move forward with our ‘Museum on the Move’ project which will see several satellite exhibitions in various venues around the five islands. With the help of Falmouth University’s ‘gaming’ department we are also developing a technologically ambitious ‘augmented reality walking companion App’, featuring some of the best-known shipwrecks around Scilly. All being well we hope to launch this initiative at Easter next year. Fingers crossed.
We have been shortlisted for an award from Cornwall Museum Partnerships for our ‘Young curators Scheme’ which was developed in partnership with the Creative Islands’ team and the Five Islands School. This project resulted in two pop up exhibitions curated by Year 8 pupils and the delightful ‘Being Scilly’ magazine that continues to sell well. Well done to all the students who took part.
We have made an application to the Arts Council recovery fund in the hope that this will allow us to commission a feasibility study for a new Museum. We are also exploring the possibility of a Hugh street presence, which would allow us to engage with the public, tell our story and promote our fundraising efforts.
Discussions and negotiations with Scilly Council, the Local Enterprise Partnership, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Cornwall Museum Partnerships and the Arts Council are resuming after a necessary hiatus and we are optimistic that a way forward can be found.
Congratulations are due to one of our distinguished Trustees, Richard Larn OBE, on the publication of his new, exquisitely illustrated, award winning book Sea of Storms which features, amongst others, five renowned shipwrecks of Scilly: Torrey Canyon, Association, Schiller, T.W. Lawson, Colossus. Well done Richard, even more impressive in your 90th year!
Request for Help.
We are looking to locate a certain H. Pritchard who lent us a Belgian clock in 2000. Please contact us if you have any information.
Addition to the archives
A recently published article has been added to the Museum Archives. The article is by Melissa Mouchemore, the daughter of one of the ITN team rescued from the Braemar by Coxswain Matt Lethbridge and his RNLI crew in 1967. Please access the article here: https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2020/05/the-scillonian-ferry/
20th April 2020
Thanks to everyone who has written in with letters of support and ideas for the future.
The Museum’s state of flux continues as we now try to weather the Covid 19 storm as well as the loss of our building.
Negotiations with the Council are ongoing and will hopefully pick up pace with the recent appointment of a new Chief Executive and once the Pandemic has abated. Planning for a new Museum is also continuing and with a prevailing wind we will begin a formal feasibility study before too long.
Work towards our Museum on the Move exhibition of temporary displays around the five inhabited islands is gaining pace and we hope to launch an Augmented Reality Shipwreck trail funded by Cornwall Museum Partnership’s wAVE project in March 2021.
If you have time, do tune in for a Radio Cornwall feature on the Museum’s Nornour collection being aired Tuesday 21 st April 7.30 -8.00 am on the Tiffany Truscott show and then again between 8pm and 9pm in the evening.
Isles of Scilly Museum Association: Public Update on Museum Closure
A structural survey was undertaken on the Museum building for the Council of the Isles of Scilly, as its landlord in January. A further survey was conducted six months later and contrary to his first report, the surveyor this time found structural weaknesses that presented a significant danger in his view to anyone entering the Museum building.
The Isles of Scilly Museum Association was duly informed by the Council and the Museum was closed to the public on June 13th and remains closed. Closure was discussed by Full Council in private session on September 17th. The Council then wrote to us on September 20th and a week later announced to the public on its website that, because the Museum building was considered beyond practical and economic repair, Councillors had therefore agreed to seek vacant possession of the building with a view to its demolition.
Museum Association Trustees find it regrettable that as landlord the council has failed to comply with its obligations under our lease, which still has 47 years to run, namely, to keep the structure of the building in good repair.
The Association naturally understands that news of the Council's announcement will have alarmed our members, volunteers and indeed those who have donated or loaned artefacts to the Museum. Over the next few weeks we will be endeavouring to contact people who have loaned artefacts to be displayed or stored within the Museum to discuss the new situation. If you don’t hear from us and have some concerns, please contact us.
We have already had offers of storage and possible display space from businesses and community groups on the islands and will be furthering these discussions with a mind to keeping as many of our collections as possible, readily accessible to researchers, visitors and the local community.
We are mindful that this must be done without compromising safety or security. In the short term we are awaiting proposals from the Council. For the longer term we are looking at options for alternative premises, including the possibility of joining forces with other local organisations to develop ideas for a new Museum, research and cultural centre.
As a small Scillonian charity, the Museum is undoubtedly facing difficult times, but small steps have already been taken to keep the islands’ heritage in the public realm. On the back of last year’s Being Scilly guide, which featured the Museum and was created in partnership with Five Islands School and the Creative Islands project, a pop-up museum is currently being developed at Carn Gwaval. It is being curated by Year 7 history students. Watch out for the opening: it’s coming soon.
We are also in the process of moving the Museum offices, the Family History Group, the Baxter Reading Room, the Archaeological Repository and Local Archives to the Porthmellon Enterprise Centre. This will give access to local researchers and for those visiting the islands and looking for information and inspiration.
If you have any bright ideas or thoughts yourselves on how the Museum might be helped through this difficult situation, please feel free to contact us at info@iosmuseum.org