Agenda item

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The Curator of the Lynn Museum introduced the report on the King’s Lynn Museum activities in the period from September to November 2024.  A copy of the report is attached to the minutes.

 

The Committee’s attention was drawn to the following areas of the report:

 

1)     Exhibitions and events at Lynn Museum

1.1   Previous Exhibition: The Moon: Meet our Nearest Neighbour

1.2   Current Exhibition Woof: A Celebration of Dogs

 

The Chair, Councillor Bubb asked whether the grant of £10,000 had all been spent.  The Curator of the Lynn Museum explained The Moon Exhibition was a hired exhibition and a large amount of the fee went towards the hire costs.

 

In response to a further question from the Chair, Councillor Bubb, the Curator explained that if there was any unspent funding it would be returned in negotiation with Borough Council colleagues.

 

The Curator explained that the Head of Service Steve Miller had recently visited the current exhibition Woof: A Celebration of Dogs at the Lynn Museum accompanied by Kate Blakemore, Chief Executive at the Borough Council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk and advised that Kate Blakemore was very impressed with the exhibition and would revisit in the near future.

 

The Committee’s attention was drawn further to the following areas of the report:

 

1.3   Family events

1.4   Family Trails

1.5   Mini Museum

1.6   Coffee Mornings

1.7   Talks Programme

1.8   Finds Identification and Recording Day on Saturday 30 November

1.9   Heritage Open Day 8 September

 

The Curator of the Lynn Museum invited the Committee to ask any questions in relation to those areas of the report.

 

Councillor Kemp thanked Officers for their work on the current exhibition Woof: A Celebration of Dogs.  Councillor Kemp asked whether they found anything valuable at the Finds Identification and Recording Day and whether anything was going to be brought into the Lynn Museum as a result.  The Curator advised that everything was of value and that Norfolk had a good track record of working closely with detectorists.

 

Councillor de Whalley asked how they engaged with detectorists.  The Assistant Head of Museums explained the Finds Identification and Recordings Service sat within the Environment department at Norfolk County Council and were very effective at raising awareness of the work that they did.

 

The Chair, Councillor Bubb referred to the Finds Identification and Recording Day and asked where and how the day was publicised.  The Curator of the Lynn Museum confirmed it was publicised through the Lynn Museum channels such as social media, local media release and through colleagues at the Finds Identification and Recordings Service.

 

In response to a question from County Councillor Chenery of Horsbrugh, the Curator of the Lynn Museum explained the trails at the Lynn Museum were typically done by the front of house team.  There would be a particular theme, and the team comes up with creative ways of using the collections to follow a particular trail.

 

Councillor Kemp referred to the Mary Anning Afternoon Talk and asked whether schools were going to be informed about it.  The Curator of the Lynn Museum explained they responded to schools’ requests for learning for their children and are flexible to come up with a suitable programme either at the Lynn Museum or working closely with colleagues at the Stories of Lynn.  The Curator of the Lynn Museum was not aware of a particular interest in Mary Anning but explained it could be part of a Victorians theme and confirmed he would discuss this with colleagues.

 

The Committee’s attention was drawn further to the following areas of the report:

 

2)    Newman Legacy Project

3)    Other Museum developments

3.1 Publicity and promotion

3.2 NMS Teaching Museum Trainees

3.3 Retail offer at Lynn Museum

4)  Borough Council partnership working

5)  Learning & Outreach

 

The Committee was invited to ask any questions in relation to those areas of the report.

 

Councillor de Whalley commented that he was interested in the discrete elements of the work on the Guildhall and asked whether they were looking at favouring specific elements or whether the themes would be interwoven.  The Assistant Head of Museums explained Dayna had been working with the design consultants PLB who had been commissioned by the Borough Council to help develop the interpretation of the Guildhall.  He explained it was early days in terms of pulling together all the different elements that could form the priorities within the interpretation strategy and advised this was something they could bring back to a future meeting of the Committee and provide an update.

 

In response to a question from Councillor Bland, the Assistant Head of Museums confirmed the exhibition on the 21^st March 2025 was being held in the Stories of Lynn.

 

Councillor Kemp referred to the interpretation strategy and asked if there was going to be an exhibition space within the Guildhall.  The Assistant Head of Museums reiterated it was very early days with regards to the strategy but commented he was confident with the experience from Norfolk Museum Service, Borough Council colleagues and the design consultants that it was something they would make sure was part of that implementation.

 

In response to a question from the Chair, Councillor Bubb, in relation to archaeology at the Guildhall site, the Assistant Head of Museums confirmed that the question would need to be referred to Borough Council colleagues as the project was being led by them.

 

The Assistant Head of Museums provided an update on the Kick the Dust countywide project.

 

Mr Davison referred to the graphs which evaluated the impacts on young people’s mental health and wellbeing and commented that he was very impressed with the results and felt that it showed how valuable the Norfolk Museum Service (NMS) was.  Mr Davison also referred to Local Government reorganisation and commented that the NMS should have information like this ready to put a strong case across on how they should be funded should any reorganisation happen in the near future.

 

In response to questions from County Councillor Chenery of Horsbrugh, the Assistant Head of Museums confirmed they had been keeping the Chair of the Norfolk Record Office involved and in terms of the history of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS), it was something that was well established in terms of public health and the NHS but it was not something that museums or Heritage and Culture organisations had actively been involved in using.

 

Councillor Kemp thanked Officers for all their work on the Kick the Dust project and asked how long the funding was going to go on for.  The Assistant Head of Museums explained they had uplift funding from Arts Council which run through until March 2027, and they would look to reapply for both the national portfolio organisation funding and the uplift funding the year prior to that.  The Assistant Head of Museums added they were currently in discussion with some of their commissioning team about that funding going forward and that they were also looking at other sources of funding to further develop the work they did in both King’s Lynn and more broadly.

 

In response to further questions from Councillor Kemp, the Assistant Head of Museums confirmed they worked with the Youth Offending Team for many years and other organisations like the Shaw Trust who were commissioned to deliver youth justice programmes.  With regards to outreach work, the Assistant Head of Museums explained across the service they had used other venues such as libraries and other types of non-heritage venues.

 

In response to a question from Councillor de Whalley, the Assistant Head of Museums explained they had worked really closely with YMCA Norfolk and YMCA Leicestershire over a number of years around providing their project staff with high quality training such as neurodivergence or trauma-informed training to ensure their project workers and other staff were aware of those issues and were confident with working with those types of young people.

 

The visitor figures were circulated to the Committee at the meeting and were noted.

 

The Committee’s attention was drawn to the Lynn Museums current position at the end of December 2024 and explained that it tallied with the previous years.

 

The total number of visitors in April 2023 to March 2024 was nearly 24,000 and they were hoping to possibly reach 25,000 this year.

 

In response to a question from the Chair, Councillor Bubb, the Curator of the Lynn Museum advised they had various ways of working out why a particular day was busier than others and explained it could be affected by the sort of activity or programme they had on.  The Curator of the Lynn Museum added they had now introduced warm Wednesdays which offered a warm space for visitors along with providing them with hot refreshments.

 

County Councillor Bambridge referred to the Stories of Lynn figure and asked why the difference was of 5,000 people.  The Assistant Head of Museums explained it was something they were aware of and believed it was a reporting issue and reassured the Committee that going forward they would ensure figures were correctly presented.

 

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.