Chief Executive’s Report
Introduction
The year 2006/7 was another exciting one for York Museums Trust in which we consolidated our position as one of the region’s leading museum services. The Trust is very aware of the responsibility in caring for the collections and the institutions and have made ambitious plans for the future.
Perhaps the most significant development in terms of long-term visitor numbers during the year was an investment of £300,000 in refreshing and re-interpreting Kirkgate, the Victorian Street at York Castle Museum.
The service to mark the anniversary of Constantine becoming Roman Emperor at York Minster
The street is consistently the most popular and memorable part of the museum for many and our improvements resulted in an increase of 41,000 visitors during the year.
The main event at the Yorkshire Museum was the exhibition Constantine The Great – York’s Roman Emperor, which combined artefacts from York’s collection and from museums across Britain and Europe. This was an important event for the whole city and attracted more than 53,000 visitors to the museum.
York Art Gallery continued to host a series of high profile exhibitions, including the summer show Icons and Idols, from the National Portrait Gallery.
The grocer’s shop in Kirkgate, York Castle Museum.
At York St Mary’s we secured funding from Arts Council Yorkshire to create a site-specific installation called Echo, by Susie MacMurray.
Over all the sites, our visitor numbers were up by 12 per cent to well over 500,000.
Our learning service for schools, which operates across all the three main sites, was recognised with the Sandford Award for Heritage Education and our work in the community continued through York Art Gallery’s Territories project and a new Community Archaeology project at the Yorkshire Museum.
We secured an additional £809,039 during the year from trusts and foundations and from Renaissance in the Regions. This is a key source of investment that has enabled us to improve our service to our visitors over the last three years, especially our ability to deliver first class learning opportunities to schools.
We also re-designed and expanded our existing websites, and launched a new website to publicise our corporate hospitality business, at www.yorkvenues.org.uk
Behind the scenes we continued to re-organise our storage spaces and improve our records and documentation of the important designated collections in our care.
Looking to the future, we prepared a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for the refurbishment of the Yorkshire Museum and put in place plans to start refurbishment of the Hospitium, our wedding and conference venue, in November 2007.
One of the newest projects was the development of the Volunteers Programme. The Trust is very keen to involve as many people as possible and although the programme has only just started, we expect it to grow over the next few years. We appointed a Volunteers Manager and two pilot schemes were put in motion, one to open up the York Observatory, in the Museum Gardens, and one to help with work on the geology collection at the Yorkshire Museum. We plan to expand this programme further in the future to all sites.
The Trust also started the process of planning a new website about the history of York, inviting experts from across the city to help to collect information about the city. The website will be a city-wide initiative and is being developed in partnership with the City of York Council.
Over the last five years York Museums Trust has established its reputation within the profession as an innovative and effective museum service.
We have established some strategically important partnerships within the city of York, with other museums in the region through Renaissance Yorkshire and with the British Museum Partnership UK.
I would like to thank all organisations and sponsors which have supported us over the years, particularly our continuing support from City of York Council, which is vital to our success. We also value highly our continuing close and productive relationships with the Friends of York Art Gallery and the Yorkshire Philosophical Society.
Finally I would like to thank Robin Guthrie, our Chair, and the Trustees, for their support and all my colleagues at the Trust for their hard work and commitment.
Janet Barnes - Chief Executive
York Museums Trust, September 2007