Island life - Museums Association

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Island life

Museums on islands can only flourish if they work closely with their local communities. Deborah Mulhearn
Island life can be idyllic but it can also be precarious. Islands are often vulnerable to inclement weather, economic pressures and even invading forces. And the post-recession economy has thrown up tough challenges for the many islands where tourism is crucial to their survival.

So organisations on small islands have to work together and often operate integrated services, incorporating museums, heritage bodies and visitor attractions with wider leisure services such as holiday accommodation and transport providers.

Island museum services work hard to welcome tourists and reap the benefits in the summer or during festivals when numbers can swell to up to 10 times the population.

All museums face the challenge of repeat visits, but this is amplified on islands where there is no passing trade and summer and winter programmes have to be tailored accordingly. But they must also cater for local communities throughout the year.

“We have to think differently,” says Doug Ford, the head of community learning at Jersey Heritage, a charitable trust that looks after the island’s major historic sites, museums and archives but also offers holiday accommodation in places such as converted historic forts and gun positions.

“We have a different history and therefore a different relationship to government,” Ford says. “Government is close, there’s no anonymity; you could see the prime minister doing his shopping in the supermarket. So partnerships can’t be avoided.

“But the most important thing is to engage local communities,” Ford says. “They are the most important partners because they are the owners of heritage and culture on the island.”

In 2009-10 Jersey Heritage experienced a funding crisis brought about by the economic changes of the previous decade. Tourist beds had more than halved on the island since the 1980s when the trust’s funding model was introduced.

“This had an impact on visitor number to our sites,” Ford says. “The fall in revenue meant we had to change the way we worked.

We had to negotiate a new service-level agreement with our main stakeholder, the States of Jersey, which saw us restructure the entire organisation, introduce new charges, re-evaluate some of the services we offered and tailor our opening times, which effectively meant closing some sites for the winter and one site for a complete year.”

Staff numbers had to be cut by just over 20% across the organisation. The restructuring also meant placing greater emphasis on working with the community and other island organisations such as the National Trust for Jersey, the Société Jersiaise and the Channel Islands Occupation Society.

“Most importantly a membership scheme to engage with the island community has been very successful,” Ford says. The trust has about 9,000 members out of a population of 98,000 (one in four of families in Jersey with children under 16 are Jersey Heritage members).

“Our October cider-making festival is probably the only place where you will hear the original Jerriais language spoken,” Ford says. “It’s all about strengthening cultural identity, and this makes for a much more vibrant experience for visitors too.”

Jersey War Tunnels is a privately owned company and is not part of Jersey Heritage, but it is part of a portfolio of attractions on the island and uses the Jersey Pass system, which allows people to pre-buy tickets to all the attractions.

“We have a unique product here,” says Kathy Bechelet, the operations manager at Jersey War Tunnels.

“People still don’t realise we were the only part of Britain to be occupied. We have a lot of war memorabilia and the interest in the second world war is growing.

“We rely heavily on Jersey Tourism and we also have a very good working relationship with all the travel providers,” Bechelet says. “We are very lucky to be near to France and England, so we can attract both sets of visitors to our island.”

Unencumbered with the bureaucracy of working across several authorities, island services can be streamlined and efficient.

“It means we can be nimble in our decision-making but also in acting upon those decisions,” says Jude Dicken, the documentation officer at Manx National Heritage

“On a small island it’s easy to pick up the phone and talk direct to a government minister or business leader. We have the usual challenges but being a forgotten outpost isn’t one of them.”

Manx National Heritage capitalises on the tens of thousands who come to the TT motorcycle races (almost 40,000 in 2013). There are also a growing number of pleasure cruisers and steam enthusiasts.

“Small islands are experts in ‘destination management’ and ‘cross promotion’ but you don’t have to be surrounded by water to identify a great destination and then bring providers together to deliver it,” Dicken says. “For example, we’re good at co-ordinating the steam railway and vintage buses to get visitors to our sites.”

Manx National Heritage looks after 13 heritage sites including the National Monuments Service, National Trust Service, National Library and Archive and the National Art Gallery but, like other islands, the Isle of Man puts community cohesion before tourists.

Festivals such as Hop tu Naa, the Manx Halloween, are aimed at local communities and not tourists. This creates a virtuous circle where local traditions attract tourists, and their presence in turn helps to keep those local traditions alive.

“The roots of any culture have to be strong if they are to survive,” Dicken says. “Islands have particularly strong cultural roots and museums can build on that by engendering a sense of pride and ownership.

Whatever the weather, thousands of people turn up to carve turnips at Hop tu Naa at our living museum at Cregneash. We may be small but we have a national focus, and this works in our favour as a national museum service.”

Shetland’s museums have faced cuts but its economy has fared better than other islands’ since the recession because of its buoyant seafood industry and a mini-construction boom related to a new gas field.

A long experience of operating as an integrated service, and strategic investment in areas such as marketing, infrastructure and new visitor centres has meant tourism is growing.

Since the new museum opened in 2007 in Lerwick, repeat visits by locals have also grown year on year, with all the spin-offs for the local economy such as bed and breakfast and transport providers.

“The museum has been truly embraced by the local community,” says Jimmy Moncrieff, general manager of Shetland Amenity Trust.

“It’s a meeting point for everything from birthday parties to education programmes. Every bairn on the island has been there – the sense of community is one of the great advantages of being an island and most people take advantage of that. “You can’t do ersatz culture purely for the tourists,” Moncrieff says.

“We don’t have the budget, but also focusing on your own culture promotes it as a brand. Up Helly Aa, the Viking fire festival, is not put on for visitors but they are welcome, and if they come they will have a more authentic experience. And people are coming, even in freezing cold January when the festival is held. And they are staying longer and spending more.”

Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist

All aboard the floating museum

The Art and Islands Foundation has been developing arts projects on the Channel Islands since 2008 when a research programme led to the installation of an Antony Gormley work at Castle Cornet in Guernsey.

This_was followed by Andy Goldsworthy’s Alderney Stones project in 2011. The foundation’s latest initiative involves Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who has proposed a project centred on the Channel Islands’ maritime history and how this is linked to his hometown of Quanzhou. The aim is to build a 20m-long Chinese junk.

Following its launch in 2017 the boat will become a moving museum, transporting different artists’ exhibitions, education projects and people around the islands. Cai’s ideas is that it will become the Channel Islands’ Museum of Contemporary Art. The artist has developed other unusual contemporary art spaces, including in Japan.

The idea is that the boat, an artwork in its own right, would sail around Alderney, Guernsey, Herm, Jersey and Sark so it can be seen by all islanders, no matter where they live.

Eric Snell, the director of the Art and Islands Foundation, says that, a bit like Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, artists would be invited to take over the boat and create artworks on it.

The vessel could also sail to other places in the UK, to the Mediterranean and even further, Snell says: “We are only limited by what we can think and dream up.”

The Art and Islands Foundation and Cai Studio in New York are working with a master boatbuilder in China, and a naval architect in the UK to design the boat and it will be built in St Peter Port in Guernsey.

Simon Stephens


Chessmen move northwards

The Lewis chessmen were carved from walrus ivory at some time in the 12th century and six of them will have pride of place at a purpose-built museum and archive at Lews Castle in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, due to open next summer.

This £14m heritage facility for the Outer Hebrides is being built adjoining the castle, last used as a college and school over two decades ago.

The project, led by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (formerly the Western Isles Council) with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and other partners, will also provide public access to the restored castle and high_quality hospitality facilities.

The chessmen, on long-term loan from the British Museum from November 2015, will draw many visitors to the new museum and the island at large.

“It’s fabulous that the chessmen are returning to the islands and that we have the partnership with the British Museum,” says Trish Botten, the libraries and heritage manager for the Outer Hebrides.

“They have deep emotional significance for islanders but also for the diaspora. People will book their holidays specifically to see them in the local setting.

“However, visitors will discover that the story of the Outer Hebrides is much more than the chessmen – the new galleries will challenge people, local and visiting, to think about the past in the context of the present and the future. We will be inviting non-Gaelic speakers to share the Gaelic culture with us through music, literature, storytelling and games.”

The museum will share some common space with the hotel on the ground floor of the original castle building and the public will be free to wander seamlessly between them.

“The hotel will run the shop and cafe as a commercial concern, but we will suggest heritage objects and this could be an interesting and beneficial retail model,” Botten says.

The new museum and archive will be a gateway to all the heritage of the Outer Hebrides.

“We will actively signpost to the other heritage organisations across the Outer Hebrides – working together as a heritage network will bring shared benefits,” Botten says.

“We are building a heritage service and not just a building.”

Deborah Mulhearn

Seaway stories

Promoting a shared culture is one way for smaller islands to develop links and attract visitors. Destination Viking is a voluntary association of museums and universities active in the Viking world across Britain, Scandinavia and beyond.

The Vikings settled in many of Britain’s northerly islands including Shetland, Orkney and the Isle of Man. Destination Viking aims to link these islands together with Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and museums such as the British Museum and Jorvik Viking Centre in York to develop the Viking routes in a similar way to the Unesco-recognised pilgrimage routes of the apostle St James to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

“It’s a borderless tourism concept promoting a cultural heritage which reaches to the fringes of Eastern Europe and Russia, and west to North America”, says Jimmy Moncrieff, the general manager of the Shetland Amenity Trust and chairman of Destination Viking.

“The Vikings are great for breaking down barriers because they appeal to everyone. We want to tell the real story of the places they went based on authenticity and not the Disneyfication of the Vikings.

“From Shetland’s point of view we already have good transport links with Scandinavia and lots of tourists come here,” Moncrieff says.

“We want to build on that and show the Nordic heritage on Shetland, such as the many longhouse sites here. They survived because there are very few trees on Shetland so buildings had to be made from stone. And on Unst there is a replica of the Viking longship Skidbladner.

“Yes, the Vikings were destructive but they were also tremendous craftsmen and they wrote wonderful sagas,” Moncrieff says.

“Importantly, we are linking with the fascinating Viking legacies of other islands, for example, on the Isle of Man there are carved stone crosses with Christian and pagan motifs. Being part of a wider community is a much more powerful message. It’s an open partnership and we are constantly learning, networking, sharing skills.”

Deborah Mulhearn


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