Read the full April Newsletter from South West Museum Development This is the first official newsletter from Museum Development South West. We also have a brand new website and a digital copy of our upcoming programme is now available to download. We’ve launched our Small Open Grants 2024, which awards up to £10,000 for small but impactful projects. You can also find out more about all five of our upcoming grant streams for 2024/25, made possible with support from Arts Council England and Art Fund. Over the year, our grant schemes range from supporting individuals to developing specific skills ..read more

Read the full February Newsletter from South West Museum Development This month we’re launching our new-look newsletter as we transition to Museum Development South West, as part of Museum Development England’s 2024-2026 programme. As the start of this funding period approaches, we welcome museums in the Hampshire Solent and we look forward to working in collaboration with them from April 2024. We’re also taking this opportunity to celebrate our partnership with Cornwall Museums Partnership (CMP) and thank the dedicated team with whom we have collaborated with for over 10 years Our T ..read more

Museum Development England is running a national skills needs survey in February and March 2024. This is an opportunity for museums to tell us about their organisation’s skills development needs, and this insight will directly inform our training offer for 2024 to 2027. Our Skills Training programme is designed to help your museum and its workforce respond to the ever changing demands of the sector. By participating in the skills needs survey you can ensure that the programme remains relevant and agile in the face of future challenges. Museums must register to take part in the s ..read more

Read the full January Newsletter from South West Museum Development We hope that you are feeling reenergised as we enter 2024, and are looking forward to our upcoming Winter SW Museum Skills programme. There are a limited number of places still available, take a look at our skills training webpage to browse our opportunities. Our dedicated cohort of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Champions, one of the driving forces behind our Travelling Together project, have curated a wide-ranging series of peer networks. In this newsletter we tell you how you can book onto th ..read more

We’re delighted to announce our new grant funding rounds for 2024/25. This year there will be five opportunities to secure funding from Museum Development South West (MDSW), made possible with support from Arts Council England and Art Fund. Over the year our grant schemes range from supporting individuals to develop specific skills, to supporting museums to engage with schools in meaningful ways. Please note that museums can only hold one MDSW grant (excluding Capacity Builder grants) during the financial year 2024/25, so please consider carefully which grants you would like to ..read more

On Thursday 7 March, team members, participants and supporters gathered in Taunton to celebrate our National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England funded project Travelling Together: Museum Journeys Towards Inclusion and Collaboration.  Over the course of nine months, this project took eight museums on a learning journey which supported them to learn, plan and take effective action for genuine inclusion and greater accessibility. Alongside these museum journeys, the project prioritised peer learning, recruiting seven Champions to design supportive sessions on accessibil ..read more

Our On Display! grant programme for 2023/24 is coming to a close, and in celebration we wanted to share some of the amazing projects which have been funded by these grants and showcase the array of beloved objects which are now out of storage. There are many stories to tell, but in this blog we highlight the great work of Liskeard Museum, Tiverton Museum and Beckford’s Tower.   The objective of Liskeard Museum’s On Display! project was to display examples of Edwardian clothing and choose suitable artefacts from the collection to support their story, in a new major exhibition, ‘Threads’, w ..read more

Read the full March Newsletter from South West Museum Development From April, we will be providing support, programmes and grants across the South West area, including Hampshire Solent, under the revised name Museum Development South West. Our Prospectus for the upcoming year is now available on our website, take a look at what’s in store! This February we joined the fabulous showcase of museums at the Cornwall Heritage Awards, as well as the Hampshire Solent Forum in Portsmouth where museums shared the power of small grants from Museum Development to unlock new ways to connect with communitie ..read more

Read the full February Newsletter from South West Museum Development This month we’re launching our new-look newsletter as we transition to Museum Development South West, as part of Museum Development England’s 2024-2026 programme. As the start of this funding period approaches, we welcome museums in the Hampshire Solent and we look forward to working in collaboration with them from April 2024. We’re also taking this opportunity to celebrate our partnership with Cornwall Museums Partnership (CMP) and thank the dedicated team with whom we have collaborated with for over 10 years Our T ..read more

Read the full January Newsletter from South West Museum Development We hope that you are feeling reenergised as we enter 2024, and are looking forward to our upcoming Winter SW Museum Skills programme. There are a limited number of places still available, take a look at our skills training webpage to browse our opportunities. Our dedicated cohort of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Champions, one of the driving forces behind our Travelling Together project, have curated a wide-ranging series of peer networks. In this newsletter we tell you how you can book onto them and what topics will b ..read more