Three of the Trustees met last week with Jess Johnston who is working on a National Lottery Heritage Fund application to fund the Unlocking Sole Bay’s Heritage project on behalf of Southwold Town Council. This aims to restore the Victorian police cells under the Southwold Town Hall to make them and the Council Chamber into a local heritage hub. Also to train individuals and groups to catalogue and digitise their archives and improve access to them, this is an area we at the Railway would particularly benefit from. The full list of aims of the project are detailed below.
We were very impressed with the project and how it could help us, not just the work on our archives but to progress our desire to become a fully accredited museum. Jess asked us to circulate the following survey link, responses to which will assist the application. There are only a few days left (needs to be done by Friday 25th Sept) if you are able to submit your thoughts it will really help the application.
The survey link is here
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=o_Xt4nKK7kuoU8rOqnWM_lwqHBnCtVVMsTdpRlwHI4hUQTQ3MFVKNE0xRDBMWUZDNjFFTjRUT1RaWS4u
These are the full aims of the project:
– With Suffolk Archives, train volunteers in archiving/cataloguing/digitisation, moving digitised items from across Sole Bay to The Hold archives. Run pop up exhibitions/events across 13 parishes.
– Undertake capital works to provide year-round access to Council Chamber and Victorian cells, interpreting Chamber’s heritage including stained glass linked to key local figures. Develop cells as a new heritage destination.
– Help young people to learn heritage management, research and engagement skills including a full-time Heritage Officer Apprentice role, working towards a Level 3 in Cultural Learning and Participation.
– Run a two-year heritage engagement programme with schools and community groups across Sole Bay. These will relate to themes in the Southwold Town Council archive such as WW2, coastal change, how seaside tourism has affected the community etc.
– Capture/celebrate heritage before it’s lost, eg archives, ‘orphaned’ websites and oral histories that risk being lost as people move to surrounding villages and beyond.
– Record knowledge ‘at risk’ eg that currently held by a few individuals at the Sailors’ Reading Room, where information about its historic photographs is undocumented.
– Build capacity of volunteer-run heritage organisations, who struggle with recruitment, succession planning, cataloguing and online access.
– Engagement activities to help rebuild community connection by addressing social isolation and the effects of long-term population loss.