News items related to the Eden Valley Museum

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Wednesday 5th March 2008 - Bamber Gascoigne visits Eden Valley Museum

Hot on the heels of the best visitor numbers ever, and receiving Accreditation from the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council, the Eden Valley Museum welcomed a visit by Bamber Gascoigne on Wednesday 5 March.
Bamber Gascoigne is best known for his television role as chairman of University Challenge for twenty-five years (1962-1987) before handing over to Jeremy Paxman. Bamber Gascoigne was in Edenbridge at the invitation of local businessman Alan Smith, Chair of the Eden Valley Museum Trust and Managing Partner of TopFoto, the Edenbridge-based photograph library working with Bamber Gascoigne to test his major new search tool for the web, combining timelines from his HistoryWorld with text and image search. TimeSearch is a major new asset for students, researchers, writers, academics – and museums! – to search the web through time. He demonstrated TimeSearch to the museum curators and volunteers.

For more information on this and Bamber Gascoigne's new website click here

Friday, 22nd February 2008, the Rt. Hon. Sir John Stanley, MP presented the MLA Accreditation Award to the Eden Valley Museum.

The MLA's Accreditation Scheme sets nationally agreed standards for UK museums. To meet the requirements of the scheme, museums demonstrate that they achieve clearly defined standards relating to governance and management, services for users, visitor facilities and collections management.
Hon. Curator, Jane Higgs, and Hon. Secretary to the Executive Committee, Helen Jackman, worked tirelessly towards implementing the standards necessary, which could not have been achieved without the support and enthusiasm of their wonderful team of volunteers.

For more information on this and video of the presentation speech by Sir John Stanley click here

Picture Perfect – Museum Awarded MDS Grant

Following a successful bid to the Kent & Medway Museum Development Service (MDS) Grants programme, volunteers at the museum, in conjunction with TopFoto (Edenbridge), have embarked upon a project to create a digital archive of the museum’s collections of postcards, photographs and slides.
The project, led by Deputy Hon. Curator Joan Varley, started on 1st February and is due to complete on 31st July, by which time several thousand images will have been scanned and stored, creating a digital archive that will safeguard the collections for future generations and which can also be drawn upon for future exhibitions.

Eden Valley Museum – Visitor Numbers Reach All Time High

2007 saw the highest number of visitors to the Eden Valley Museum since it opened in 2000.
More than 4500 people were attracted by exhibitions such as ‘All Good Sports’ and ‘Hurricane Havoc’. Forthcoming exhibitions in 2008 will include Edenbridge High Street History (now showing) a special exhibition created in recognition of the Edenbridge 2008 Project which draws to its conclusion at the end of March; A Tudor Drama (Mar–Sep); Schooldays (Jun–Dec); and Our River / The Great Floods (Sep– Dec) remembering the floods of 1958 and 1968.

Art Competition and Exhibition July 2005

The Theme for 2005's Art Exhibition is The Art of Travel. The competition is open to local school children and adults and will be on display at the museum from Saturday 23rd - Sunday 24th July 2005. Artists are encouraged to enter a piece of work in any medium and to let their imagination take them on a journey of discovery.

Visitors will be invited to vote for their favourite work of art. For further details and an entrance form please pick a leaflet up from the museum.

This competition and exhibition was sponsored by Lloyds TSB.

Churchill Exhibition is a great success

A new, temporary exhibition opened during the summer of 2004 at the museum giving a new insight to our most famous country neighbour - Sir Winston Churchill. The exhibition of photographs illustrated Churchill's life as a Family Man, Statesman, War-time Leader & Hero, Countryman & Sportsman, Darling of The Crowds and also showed what his life was like at Chartwell. The exhibition continued in other rooms of the museum where personal mementoes of local residents show the close relationship the Churchill family had with local people.

There are C.D's and booklets still available for purchase in the Museum Shop.

This exhibition was sponsored by www.topfoto.co.uk and entrance to the museum was free during the run of the exhibition.

Were You Being Served?

The Celebrity Coffee morning held on Saturday 14th February 2003 was a massive success. Actors from the 70's sitcom Are You Being Served lent their support to the museum and attracted a huge crowd to the event. The steady stream of visitors meant that Mollie Sugden (Mrs Slocombe), Frank Thornton (Captain Peacock) and Trevor Bannister (Mr Lucas) were kept busy handing out cups of tea and signing autographs.

Photograph courtesy of Chronicle Newspapers

Mr Thornton, father of honorary curator Jane Higgs, joked, "I am here because my daughter ordered me to be. Things like this allow people to get to know their neighbours. When I was young everybody lived around the corner, but now with the car, everybody is spread out and that sense of local community is in danger of being diluted."

Mr Bannister, surrounded by a keen throng of people added, "It is lovely to see such good support for the museum. Not every place is going to have one because not everywhere has the artefacts and history around it."

The event was a huge success and raised in excess of £1000.

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