We recently applied to the National Trust for the lease of The Old Forge in the Harbour. This would have been an ideal opportunity to establish a permanent exhibition site for the Archives, with easy access for local residents and visitors alike. We could have rotated the artefacts in a series of themed exhibitions, starting appropriately with the remarkable story of the 2004 flood and its impact on the community.
Unfortunately, our application was rejected by the Trust in favour of another applicant. We felt our application had been well-aligned to the Trust’s stated aims, objectives and values, and were disappointed the Trust did not give us an opportunity to discuss our application with them. For now, at least, we have a ‘plan b’. If we cannot have a permanent exhibition site to draw in people, we can perhaps go where they are in a series of ‘pop up’ exhibitions in and around the area.
Our plans now are to continue to catalogue the items held in the archives, reorganise the storeroom in the Community Centre to make more room and turn it into an office/working space, and develop a mobile exhibition facility. We have exhibition boards to display photographs etc. and hope to acquire a mobile exhibition cabinet which will cost in the region of £2000. We have no income at the moment, so we also need to develop a fundraising strategy.
As mentioned previously, we need to identify and list all the items in the Archives and therefore are asking for your help. We have decided to make our starting point an assumption that everything in the Archives was a GIFT, rather than a LOAN. However, we know this won’t be right in all cases and we need to establish ownership. If you or your family havegifted or loaned anything to the Archives, please could you contact us by the end of this month with details so that we can clarify the situation and update our records. We thank allthose who have contacted us already.
We now have an email address: boscastlevillagearchives@gmail.com, but please be aware this is not checked daily and there may be a short delay in replying. We look forward to hearing from you.
