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While the UCM will continue within ACE’s National Portfolio from 2023-2026<\/a>, a challenging funding environment has prompted difficult decisions. We regret that, while our commitment to regional support is unchanged, we will no longer be able to continue to offer this support in the same way through the Regional Conservation Officer post from 31 July 2023.<\/p>\n We acknowledge that this news also comes within the context of wider changes to museum development funding<\/a> nationally. Arts Council England has announced a substantial change in approach for 2024-26. This will see the creation of new sources of support centrally within ACE, and SHARE succeeded by a new museum development provider working across both the East and South East.<\/p>\n While plans for the new East & South East provider are developed, we are working very closely with SHARE, Museums in Cambridgeshire<\/a>, and the Cambridgeshire Museum Development Officer to identify further sources of support and ensure a long-term legacy for the Regional Conservation Officer\u2019s work.<\/p>\n For its final year as the regional Museum Development programme, in 2023-24 SHARE will put in place new arrangements for collections care and conservation support. It will provide a programme of collections care training, plus online 1-1 collections care surgeries with an accredited conservator. There will also be small grants for museums to employ a conservator for a more in-depth review of their collections care and conservation requirements.<\/p>\n It\u2019s only right that we take this opportunity to recognise the tremendous impact of the Regional Conservation Officer post over the last 13 years, during which time it has been held by Deborah Walton. Her goal has been to improve conservation and collections care for all, regardless of starting point, and to make this accessible and attainable for all organisations in the region.\u00a0 She has achieved this through a combination of strategic planning, developing networks and resources<\/a>, providing training and working closely with SHARE museum development, county Museum Development Officers and other Regional Conservation Officers to reach far and wide in the region.<\/p>\n Deborah has worked hard to remove perceived barriers to communication and establish common ground \u2013 as she says, conservation is there to \u2018enable the activities of a museum \u2013 not forbid!\u2019.\u00a0 She has done this in many ways, including through networks like the SHARE Heritage Engineering Network and EACF\/SHARE Conservation Network, and also through working directly with museums, visiting their sites, giving advice and audits, and being fully available for everyone to contact.\u00a0 She has run and organised countless training courses, building skills and confidence in onsite collections care, and backed this up by creating the loan bank of equipment. A special shout out must go to the series of nine UCM SHARE Collections Care Conferences<\/a> Deborah initiated and co-organised,\u00a0which have provided practical inspiration and stimulated informal networks amongst museums in the region and beyond.<\/p>\n Through work with EACF\/SHARE Conservation Network Deborah has also developed local support for practicing conservators in the region, so they are better able to work with museums, and has brought regional museums into closer contact with conservators and the conservation sector.\u00a0\u00a0She is active in the wider heritage sector in the UK, and has been a trustee at Icon Institute for Conservation, working on topics such as ethics, groups and networks, and sustainability.\u00a0 This has fed into her work in the region, embedding these advances into local practice.<\/p>\n Deborah has a brilliant way of combining strategic planning with a deeply practical and human approach and this is why she has been so successful.\u00a0 Her response to the COVID-19 crisis was a typical example of this.\u00a0 She quickly adapted to supporting the museums remotely and, with SHARE, ran coffee mornings and training sessions online, which both gave practical support at a difficult time and also helped to keep the sense of community in the museums alive when everything was locked down. This digital working has been a tool which we will carry forward into the financially strapped and energy restricted 2020s, making support from colleagues possible in a way we couldn\u2019t have imagined a few years ago.<\/p>\n Deborah says:<\/p>\n \u2018Thank you to all the wonderful staff and volunteers in the museums of Cambridgeshire and the East of England.\u00a0 It has been a delight working with you. Your willingness to be flexible, open minded and work together has made my job so much easier, I\u2019ve learned a great deal from you all and made so many great memories.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to say thank you to all the great people I have met through various steering groups, networks, committees and boards.\u00a0 You\u2019ve been fantastic to work with and I thoroughly recommend to anyone to get involved with organisations outside your own \u2013 it\u2019s extremely rewarding and a great way to meet really interesting people.\u00a0 Thank you also to colleagues, past and present in the SHARE team and UCM who have been such great support. And lastly, to the original Regional Conservation Officers: Sarah Norcross Robinson, Libby Finney and Robert Entwistle.\u00a0 This was the original dream team – absolutely amazing, knowledgeable and dedicated people who I had so much fun working with.\u00a0 It has been a privilege to have this job for so long, and I\u2019m a much better person and professional for having been able to work with you all.\u2019<\/p>\n Thank you, Deborah, so much for everything you have given to the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The East of England is home to an astonishing 182 museums within the Accreditation scheme, with a higher proportion of small, independent organisations than the national average. Since 2012, the University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) have been proud to support the regional sector through the work of a dedicated Regional Conservation Officer, funded by Arts Council England (ACE), and working… Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":9526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[369],"tags":[225],"coauthors":[203],"class_list":["post-12826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-museum-life","tag-collections-care"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12826"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12835,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12826\/revisions\/12835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12826"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Support moving forwards<\/h3>\n
Celebrating Deborah<\/h3>\n
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