The fun in fundraising
Einstein said “Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination takes you everywhere”.
Hello, I’m Rachel
My job at the museum is to develop what we do through projects and fundraising. I love working with our talented team, volunteers and visitors to find inspiring new ways into the collections – to do more with them for more people.
We have seen computer games inspired by African objects, under 5’s unlock the meaning of 3-toed Roman tiles and contemporary dance recreate the fossilisation process (see below: The Imagination Museum; photo by Chris Nash). Quite often this means writing a captivating application to funders, which will inspire and encourage them to give us the funding to make this work happen.
I recently described project management as painting by numbers. I don’t mean it’s prescriptive and the outcomes set. You need to know roughly how you want a project to look (the aims), the edges of what you can do (the scope) and how you will measure each stage as to whether it’s been reached and how it went (the evaluation). In the end, we hope it will be a masterpiece. In reality, whether that happens depends on the people holding the paintbrush. They need imagination and a positive attitude to overcome challenges and take responsibility for completing the picture, sharing it and learning along the way.
We raise funds to develop and deliver projects that make a difference to people. I work with Lib, who blogged back in September to tell you about The Training Museum and all the different roles that exist in museums. We’ve been planning what comes next and have recently been awarded £570,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund. We’ll be working with Suffolk Museums to deliver 27 traineeships between now and 2022. If you buy lottery tickets, then you’ll have played a role in giving local young people this opportunity to train in museums through the ‘Transforming People to Transform Museums’ project.
Are you inspired by museums? Do you have imagination and dedication? If so, perhaps you would be one of our future trainees. How would you capture our imaginations in your application?
We look forward to hearing your ideas.
