BAFM MEMBERS NEWS - 4
THE FRIENDS OF LLANCAIACH
MUSEUM WINS TOP AWARD
The Friends of Llancaiach Fawr are delighted that their museum has picked up a top award. The Sandford Award was presented for the outstanding quality of the education service offered to pupils and students across the age and ability range. The citation for the award reads:
Llancaiach Fawr provides a fascinating and evocative experience for students. The costumed interpreters are highly skilled, they interact with students whilst helping them to learn the important facts about the period. The Learning Officer has developed the exceptionally well organised education programmes with relevance to the curriculum and learning styles of the students, enabling a high-quality, inspirational learning experience for all.
The judge, Shelley Fielder, said in her report: This is one of the finest pieces of live interpretation I have seen. Thank you for an inspiring day.
Louise Griffin, Learning Officer, said: It was a pleasure to accept the Award on behalf of all the staff, who work so hard to ensure that our young visitors have an experience of the past that lasts them for a lifetime. Children remember the sights and smells, the crackling of the fires and the candlelight that give them an insight into life in the 17th century; you would be surprised how many adults tell us they remember visiting when they were at school and tell us about the day they spent here.
The Friends are proud to be associated with the award-winning Llancaiach Fawr, where they, the volunteers and the professionals work so well together. The picture shows Louise Griffith, together with Head Historic Interpreter, Dorothy Harvey, at Windsor Castle, having accepted the award from the Earl of Wessex at the prestigious ceremony held there.
THE FRIENDS OF BRISTOL CITY MUSEUM & ART GALLERY
BANKSY VERSUS BRISTOL MUSEUM
Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery had never seen anything like it. Over the ten week period of the exhibition an average of 4,700 people visited the show every day. It was the first time in a century that any exhibition there had attracted such a mass of visitors in such a short time and the economic impact on the city was substantial.
Almost immediately, volunteers were drafted in from the Friends of Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives, donning the uniform black polo shirt of the museum staff and helping to steward the crowds waiting patiently outside - in queues of up to six hours in the final few weeks of the exhibition. It was proof that the graffiti Banksy had committed to walls, pavements, bins and all kinds of other surfaces around the country and abroad had impacted deeply on thousands of people.
The museum was coping with huge pressures on staff, many taken on temporarily for the exhibition, and the volunteers put in many hours, particularly at weekends, helping with attendance surveys and warning about the long wait people might expect in the queue.
Some volunteers were asked specifically to carry out attendance surveys within the museum, finding out from where visitors had come and how long they were staying in Bristol, to try to measure the economic impact of such an influx of visitors to the city. The overwhelming response from those surveyed was that the wait in the queue was well worthwhile. They came because they thought Banksy was brilliant, subversive - and free. Even so, lots of them, especially foreign visitors, were astounded that there was no admission charge. They were encouraged to put a donation in the collection box and some did - raising around £45,000 for the museum.
This was a one-off major exhibition by an artist who remains elusive and anonymous, yet is now one of the most famous of Bristol’s artists. It was a quality show, subversive and funny, featuring such delights as a nest of CCTVs bringing up CCTV chicks, fish fingers swimming in a goldfish bowl, a model of Jerusalem ‘improved’ by 284 toy soldiers, and an escapee from Guantanamo Bay hijacking the Bristol Boxkite hanging from the ceiling in the front hall. Banksy is a terrific draughtsman, model-maker and communicator.
We were glad to help out at a time of huge pressure on the museum.
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