Emma King Consultancy

New Projects for Autumn

With summer holidays how behind us, we're turning our minds towards some of the exciting projects we have to look forward to this Autumn.

First up, we have been commissioned by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to undertake a review of the Curatorial Adviser scheme with heritage consultant Alison Bodley. Curatorial Advisers are the unsung heroes of the museum world: by giving their time for free to independent museums, they enable museums without qualified curatorial staff to achieve Accreditation. Alison and Emma will be looking at how the adviser scheme operates across the UK, mapping the spread of advisers and making recommendations for how the scheme could be better organised in order to improve the support available to independent museums as the new Accreditation standard is implemented from next year.

Secondly, Emma is delighted to have been asked to repeat the impact assessment of the Museum Development Officer network that she did for MLA London last year. The research will be done between August and September with reports complete by mid-October to inform key Renaissance London meetings.

Clearly these are unprecedented economic and political circumstances for museums, and we are pleased to be able to contribute to strategic and programme development and inform what will inevitably be some very difficult decisions.

We are also developing new learning and evaluation projects. Our relationship with English Heritage continues with a project to develop teachers' kits for Warkworth and Carlisle castles, and we are looking forward to starting on a piece of work for Renaissance Yorkshire to evaluate the Precious Cargo Stories of the World project between now and March 2011.  Here's the project summary on the Culture 24 website.  Watch this space for further news!

With new projects, we also see the end of some previous pieces of work. After much thought, Emma has opted to step down as the training officer for the Yorkshire Federation. After two years of getting the programme up and running, it's time to hand over to someone else to develop it further. The Fed is advertising the role on its website with a closing date of 3 September: see www.yhfed.org.uk for details.