We are currently a small start-up, bringing together a wealth of experience, knowledge and education, to the challenges of running small, volunteer led museums.

Working with charities

We can bring extensive experience of working with charities as trustees, employees and volunteers. We have experience of charity law and charity commission guidance, working within charitable objects, wholly owned trading companies, risk management, charity finances, strategic planning and general governance processes.

Working with volunteers

We bring experience of working as volunteers, working alongside volunteers, managing volunteers, recruiting volunteers, giving back to volunteers. We have a combined 40 or so years of volunteering, mainly in front-of-house, engagement and presentation roles, but also as volunteer managers and developers. We have particular experience working with young volunteers and using volunteering activities to support career development.

Our network

We are members of the Museums Association, the Association of Heritage Interpreters and Kids in Museums organisations. We are in regular touch with organisations such as SHARE East.

Our training

We are trained in Interpretation Planning and have participated in training for a variety of relevant skills including

• Safeguarding
• SEND and Dementia awareness in museums
• Social media planning
• Warm welcome training

More importantly, we practice these skills in our own careers and volunteering.

Our funding

We won our initial start-up funding from two sources

Cambridge Enterprise awarded us funding and business advisory support for our start-up period. This enabled us to cover some initial business costs but perhaps even more valuably, it gave us an advisor who reviewed our plans, suggested connections, discussed business models and generally acted as a sounding board for our ideas. We are immensely grateful for their foundational support and encouragement.

https://www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/

Cambridge University Arts & Humanities Impact Fund also awarded us funding in 2020. This is enabled us to deliver a pilot project to a number of micromuseums through to September 2021. From this work, we have evidence to show the positive impact we can have for museums, which will enable us to secure further funding.

Cambridge University Arts & Humanities Impact Fund generously awarded us a second year of funding to further develop ourimpact through our ‘Telling their Stories’ project. This is enabled us to deliver a project to Maldon Museum in the park, around 3 rooms, plus a summer exhibition based on interpretive labelling.

We are grateful for the confidence show in our initiative by the Cambridge University Arts & Humanities Impact Fund.

https://www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/grant/arts-and-humanities-impact-fund/

Future funding

We understand that many or most micromuseums are unlikely to have the funds sitting in their accounts to pay for our services. So we work on the basis that funding will come from a blended solution. We can work with micromuseums to work out how our services can be funded, from grants, fund-raising activities and donations..