Redevelopment Update!

It’s been a fairly quiet season for the Museum this year, but it’s been lovely being able to welcome visitors back to the area and seeing local businesses thrive once again.

The visitors might have left but the work continues. Behind the scenes progress is being made quickly with our redevelopment project, now that we have received stage one funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Our architects, Peter Drummond of Glasgow, are working on preliminary designs for the development of our outdoor spaces which will improve our visitor facilities as well as increasing our exhibition spaces. Overhauling our historic displays will be our new exhibition designers, Mather & Co, who have worked with such diverse attractions as Inverness Castle, the National Coal Mining Museum and St Albans Cathedral. We’re thrilled to see them busy at work on project and are looking forward to showing off their designs in the near future.

We are also delighted to welcome to the team our new Learning and Engagement Officer. Parris Joyce joins us from the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum where her duties were wide-ranging; from delivering formal learning programmes with nursery and school groups, to delivering informal learning programmes like Halloween and Easter crafts sessions, storytelling events and outdoor family workshops, to managing over fifty volunteers, to dressing up in costume to deliver guided tours to the public, to managing the museum’s social media channels and marketing events, to advocating for greater accessibility in the museum, to delivering outreach programmes within the local community and supervising a traineeship programme to allow people to enter the museum sector workforce. She will be transforming how we bring local history to life for schools and the local (and global!) community. She’ll be out and about all over the place so do say hi!

Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes updated and redevelopment news!