Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford

period of normal running. But I felt that the combination of continually rising visitor numbers
(up again this year, despite the closure of galleries, to 196,000) and the declining amount of
Heritage Lottery funding available (as the full costs of the Olympics emerge) meant that we
should not delay a Lottery application. I am very grateful to all my colleagues for their
preparedness to undertake this further major project in what will have been a decade of
renewal for the Museum. The HLF award itself is a real tribute to the Museum and to its staff
and supporters, and to our commitment to serving as a welcoming and accessible face of the
University, as well as a centre for innovatory scholarship and teaching. The award is also a
valuable external endorsement at a time when we will shortly need to compete again for two
major, external funding sources—that is, ‘Hub’ funding from the government’s Renaissance
programme and ‘core funding’ from the Arts and Humanities Research Council—which
together provide the Museum with £1,000,000 annually. Indeed, the insecurity of funding for
major university museums was highlighted by a recent parliamentary report to which the
Ashmolean’s director and I both gave evidence over the course of the year.
Preparing the HLF application was itself a major undertaking. It entailed extensive
research and public consultation (which substantiated the necessity for the work), and the
compilation of lengthy supporting documents running into hundreds of pages, including
reports from our architects, mechanical and electrical engineers, and cost consultants. I would
like to acknowledge with gratitude the exceptional efforts made by everyone involved,
especially the core team who pulled the bid together: my executive research assistant Imogen
Crawford-Mowday; the Museum’s access and public relations manager, Kate White; the
(then) development officer, Lois Sketchley; the Museum’s administrator, Cathy Wright—
who somehow managed to do this as well as so much else; and Kate Gardner, whose flair as a
designer gave the finished application an appearance to match its content. I would also like to
thank here our HLF case officer, Sarah Tebbot, who was both encouraging and critical as
appropriate.
The HLF award is also conditional upon our finding nearly £500,000 in partnership
funding. With the help of generous trusts and foundations, we have already made a
substantial start (the details technically fall in the 2007–08 reporting year and will be
gratefully acknowledged then), but there is a good deal more still to do before the works start.
Here, as always, I know that we will be able to count on the valued support of the Museum’s
Friends and their Patrons. At this stage, it appears that the necessary building work will
commence in July 2008 and that we will have to close the galleries for at least part of the
duration of the works. Full details will of course be announced and advertised on the
Museum’s website well in advance, and as soon as they are firm.
This award was not the only one the HLF made to the Museum this year. A second,
‘Young Roots’ award was made to Andrew McLellan and Suzy Prior to enable them to make
films around the Museum with sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds, teaching them about heritage
as well as vocational skills. This form of innovative outreach is one of many undertaken by
the Museum’s education section in particular and helps feed into the targets set by the ‘Hub’,
which funds the Museum’s education service as a whole. Enhanced ‘Hub’ funding this year
also allowed us to increase the Museum’s opening hours by a further twelve per week, in
addition to making a number of other staff appointments. We were also able to welcome as a
‘Hub’-funded trainee Nicola Tettey, with us for two years while she also undertakes a
Master’s degree in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. Full details of ‘Hub’
support through the Renaissance programme are provided later in this report, a testament to
the work of my colleague John Hobart, who efficiently co-ordinates all the ‘Hub’-funded
activities undertaken by the University’s museums as a whole.
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