This week our volunteers from the Garden City Collection, Sue Kewley and Peter and Valerie Pennifer, attended the Eastern Region’s annual Volunteer Awards, organised by SHAREMuseums East.
They were representing all our volunteers who give their time to the Collection every year after they were nominated by the Curatorial Team as ‘Collections Champions’.
The awards were presented at a ceremony on 8 June 2017 at the Museum of East Anglian Life in Stowmarket and celebrated the immense input volunteers make to the region’s museums, both large and small. The awards were part of a wider national Volunteers Week.
Our first volunteers joined us in 2008 and most of that group are still with us. At that point there were four members of staff and around 12,000 digitised items. Now there are four members of staff and 21 volunteers and 67,000 items viewable online!
Our volunteers are unofficial ambassadors for what we do and help us feel part of the wider community.
We are a more successful museum because of our volunteers and couldn’t really imagine being without them.
You can follow our progress as we digitise the collections by browsing our website www.gardencitycollection.com or find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Information on Share: www.sharemuseumseast.org.uk
About the Garden City Collection
This internationally significant collection has more than 250,000 historical objects cared for by the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, including the archives of the early Garden City Movement, architectural plans of the world’s first garden city, as well as furniture, art and a wealth of social history telling the story of the world’s first garden city.
The Collection is open to the public for tours and each year welcomes researchers from around the world to its study rooms. Visit today to see this incredible collection.
