An exhibition from popular local papier mâché artists

Justin Mitchell & Emily Firmin

This is a simply delightful show - it just makes you want to smile as work your way round it. There are papier mâché pictures-cum-sculptures by Emily Firmin, and automata by Justin Mitchell - that's a rough division, I think there's a fair bit of overlap in terms of who does what.

So once again the coast shall have to be content with Canterbury’s leavings for a year or so. I envisage that until the Beaney opens in September, there will be fewer events and little perceptible movement in coastal museum development. However the museum team are due to deliver on an internal review that they held amongst themselves, some time in the spring. From this we should be able to discern the shape of things to come.

This year has been an encouraging one, in January we finally received the news that the museum had, for the time being, been reprieved. In May we learned about the appointment of Jo Jones the museum service’s new director and in July we got to meet her and in September the membership got to meet her at the Museum Friends social.

At the end of September the Friends stall at the Giant Picnic was the first real bit of outreach activity that we had organised for the museum, and a taste of the kind of thing I hope we will be doing more of. Friends are now invited to all private views, and the opportunity for further social and community events looks bright.

In the coming year we will need to look at helping with funding and finding ways to increase the footfall. We are in the process of joining the British Association of Friends of Museums with a view to finding support and advice from more experienced groups than ours.

In a year we have made the transition from a fairly militant campaign group to an organisation supportive of a museum that now has the opportunity to flower and become a more significant in the cultural life of the town.

Sometime in the Spring our membership secretary, Phil, will be seeking subscription renewals. Please continue to support the Friends, without community groups actively involved in these crucial services, they can easily fall again under the shadow of the axe, especially in such straitened times.

David Cross, Secretary

Ideas like the People’s Case, the Picture of the Month, a return to a more mixed and vigorous exhibition programme, more regular changes in the permanent displays and better marketing, these have all been met with enthusiasm. Moves like this answer many of the criticisms that we heard from people during the “Save the Museum” campaign. But to make them and other ideas happen needs input from everyone.

When you signed the petition in 2009 or joined the Friends, you were moved to register your anger or your support, now we need to hear your voice again, come to the Social in September, write to the Newsletter or email MuseumFriends@HerneBayMatters.com

Ideas wanted, comments required and suggestions sought.

Jenny Cross, Chair

July 2011

Previously I was Arts and Cultural Services Manager for Museums and Galleries for Sefton MBC, based in Southport, Merseyside. I led on the museum and gallery aspect of The Atkinson, a £16 million project to combine three Grade Two Listed buildings and integrate a gallery, museum, library and theatre. This new cultural facility will open in 2013.

One of my priorities for Canterbury district is to create a shared vision for the museum and gallery service with staff and stakeholders. A strategy for the service will also be developed and I am very keen that this is accompanied by an action plan with dates for achieving improvements to the service so that progress can be monitored.

I had a very positive meeting with the committee of Friends of Herne Bay Museum on 7th July. It was evident that the Friends have a number of good ideas and I am looking forward to our staff and the Friends working together to develop the Museum.

We gave out lots of membership forms and people were keen to enter the prize draw, for this they had to fill in a questionnaire.

The winner of the prize draw was Angela Furlong who was excited to receive her hamper and is now a member.

As a greater part of the aim of the Friends is to encourage an increased level of community and town involvement in the museum, then we need to know what people’s interests and talents are. We need to know what the museum can do for you and what you can do for the museum - do please tell us.

With the possible exception of Mynah birds and jackdaws, no other creature fetishises objects in the way we do, no other creature manufactures objects in the way we do either and I suspect that the one activity is an integral part of the other. Since early man first recognised one stick as more useful than another or one stone more suitable than another, we have been on the track of comparing, sorting, categorising, selecting, possessing, adapting, and manufacturing; in a word, collecting.

So although you might think you don't collect anything, (and by this you mean you don't trek off to antique markets and boot fairs in search of Staffordshire cow creamers) you almost certainly do, you wouldn't be human if you didn't.

Collecting can and does include the things you use, most activities involve collections of some sort. Cooking, DIY, car maintenance, sport, gardening and making music, all demand collections of specialised tools and equipment. Many people hoard magazines; that's a collection. Keeping all your receipts for an accountant... that's an archive.

If you think about it you do collect (records? CDs? Photographs?), it's just that you don't associate the activity with what museums do, but any of those collections of workaday items, given a few years, become items of historical interest. Even without the addition of years, people's collections are interesting. They tell us about lives and life and others' experience and that's one of the things that museums are for.

So before dismissing the idea of a People's Case as nothing to do with you, think about it for a bit.

Get in touch with us at MuseumFriends@HerneBayMatters.com or write to FOHBM Newsletter 1, Mickleburgh Hill, Herne Bay CT6 6AA.

We want to hear about your collections and we want you to make an exhibition of yourself, with our help of course.

David Cross, Secretary

May 2011

In Whitstable in the early nineties the museum ran a People's Show on the same basis, it was one of the most popular shows the service ever ran.

There were collections of fossils and the kind of things one might expect in a museum, but there was also the unexpected: a collection of Homepride flour graders, a collection of veteran microphones, Star Wars figurines, tea towels from around the world, egg cups, a vast collection of cigarette packets.

So we are appealing to all you collectors out there, members and non-members alike to come forward and share your passion.

Ken Reedie, who has been Curator of the City Museums and Galleries Service since the early 1970s is due to retire as soon as the Beaney project in Canterbury is complete.

The timing of Ms. Jones' appointment means that no great changes are likely take place in the near future. We can be encouraged that in making this appointment the Council seems serious about its commitment to support the museums and avoid any further threats of closure.

We look forward to working with the new Director, who we understand is enthusiastic about community involvement, to help make Herne bay Museum become the attraction that the town needs.

So, ideas please:

• What have you ever wanted to see or do in the museum?
• What is right about the museum?
• What is wrong about the museum?

Please add a comment below, or write to the newsletter or the website, or email the Friends with your ideas.