Amersham’s Mobile Museum
Awarded: £16,080
Region: Central
Amersham Museum Limited is a registered charity, located in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
The project provided the internal fit-out of the ‘Mobile Museum’, which is a travelling exhibition that shares the story of life in Amersham and the surrounding area in the 20th Century. This enables people who do not or cannot visit the museum to have a rich and engaging museum experience from their home, school, at an event or in a community setting.
The Mobile Museum is a vintage style vehicle which houses an immersive exhibition, created by local people, that travels around the community to events, schools and care homes. It includes a facility for securely displaying collection items, creative pieces made by community groups, and a space where new memories can be collected and recorded.
The project has enabled the museum to expand their reach across a broader geographical area, reaching people who have not heard of the museum and had not visited before. In return, many people have offered stories and objects to the museum.
A community effort
Additionally, the project has provided new opportunities for the museum’s volunteers. The museum’s young curators group was responsible for selecting many of the images and the text used on the timeline wall inside the Mobile Museum. The after-school art club created a display showing portraits they created of people from Amersham who are special to them. There has been great enthusiasm to support the project, resulting in a new Mobile Museum volunteer team with 39 volunteers involved. Volunteers have been trained to drive the Mobile Museum vehicle and others are involved with welcoming visitors and facilitating activities. The volunteers have enjoyed being involved and supporting the project and having a larger team has enabled the museum to expand the number and types of places that they can visit.
“The Mobile Museum will enable us to reach out to people who have not or cannot visit us. We will travel around the local area sharing the story of Amersham in the 20th Century. We will visit schools, care homes, community groups, fetes and festivals in our vintage style vehicle. We will share objects, images, documents, oral histories and showcase work created by local people. We believe it will transform the number and range of people we reach and change people’s perceptions of what local history is. We think this is a first!”
Emily Toettcher, Curator at Amersham Museum
