30th AIM ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Hosted by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

CONFERENCE REPORT

•Pilgrim Trust makes Conservation Grant Scheme possible
•AIM celebrates 30th Anniversary at Annual Conference
•TopLots - new eBay auction project to raise funds and profile for museums

AIM launches new conservation grants to help smaller museums

A new Conservation Grant Scheme to benefit smaller museums was announced at the AIM 30th Anniversary Conference at Ironbridge, Shropshire in June.

The AIM scheme has been made possible by a generous £300,000 grant from The Pilgrim Trust which has a special interest in conservation. Spread over the next three years the fund will be used to help smaller museums restore and conserve significant objects within their collections. The grants will go some way to filling the gap left by the demise of similar grants from the former Area Museums Service network.

Lady Jay, chairman of The Pilgrim Trust, described independents as “museums at the coalface working hard to bring so many benefits and joys to so many people,” but referred to the uphill struggle they faced in caring for their collections. There was “no money” for conservation projects and The Pilgrim Trust was keen to devise a “straightforward” scheme to assist museums in this area, which is one of its key objectives. “Without the backroom work of conserving and cataloguing collections there can be no access,” she said. “I am quite sure there will be many many simple and wonderful projects coming forward for grants.”

The Conservation Grant Scheme will be administered in a similar way to AIM’s other successful recent initiative, its Sustainability Scheme, supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

The scheme was welcomed by Keith Nichol, Head of Museums, Libraries and Cultural Property at the Department for Culture, Media & Sport. Standing in for Culture Minister, David Lammy, who had been sent to New York, he congratulated AIM on its 30th anniversary and said independent museums were “the incarnation of what is achievable.” Museums, encouraged to be more entrepreneurial, could look to the independents to take the lead on that. AIM’s pioneering work had become standard for the sector, he added.

Almost 150 delegates from independent museums and the sector gathered at Ironbridge for the anniversary conference, Local Authority – Friend or Foe? Focusing on interactive partnerships with local authorities and the concept of social enterprise, the Conference included the presentation of new AIM-commissioned research on the relationships between independent museums and local authorities.

Adrian Babbidge of Egeria Heritage Consultancy presented his AIM-commissioned nationwide research into the relationship between local authorities and independent museums. His findings threw up some interesting – and disturbing - patterns.

Local authorities – for whom museum provision is not statutory - spend an “absolutely tiny” amount of money on museums: 0.2%. Funding agreements were poorly drafted and disproportionate to the amount of grant. Loss of funding was usually at short notice as a result of “salami-slicing” of budgets. Help in kind, a useful source of help for many years, was diminishing.

On the plus side the mandatory and discretionary rate relief for charitable museums continued, town and parish councils demonstrated more support for independents than larger authorities, and the increasing need to engage with the voluntary sector went with the grain of independent museums.

But he warned that building good relationships with local authorities took much time and effort. With local authorities facing increasing pressure from central Government it was important that independents ensured they did not compromise their own aims through their partnerships.

Welcoming delegates to Ironbridge – one of the earliest independents - for the three-day conference, AIM chairman Bill Ferris said it was a highly appropriate venue for the 30th celebrations. “Who could have known then what influence the independents would have,” he said, adding: “Being independent is all about assessing opportunities and moods to take your organisation in an entrepreneurial direction.”

AIM took a new entrepreneurial direction that very day, at the launch of an exciting new project to enhance fundraising and marketing of museums through the Internet. AIM is supporting a proposal from one of its sponsors, Development Partners, to auction heritage experiences through eBay.

AIM was formed 30 years ago to represent the interests of the newly-emerging independent museums such as Ironbridge, the Black Country Living Museum, Dudley; the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu and the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, Chichester, West Sussex. Since then the association has grown with the sector, and now has a membership of some 780, including nearly 600 independent museums all over the United Kingdom. The three decades were celebrated at an AIM banquet at Enginuity, Ironbridge’s interactive science and technology centre, attended by AIM’s patron, Lord Montagu.