COLUMN: Wirksworth Heritage Centre works on building online presence

The project manager has confirmed that the building tenders are in and the best one has been selected so it shouldn’t be too long now before they get started.

We have also received some enormous signboards from Heritage Lottery Fund for fixing to the hoardings that the builders will erect around the Webster’s building.

The trustees continue to be busy. Our new trustee Michelle has moved our website to a new platform (it could be platform nine and three quarters for all I know about such matters) so that it can be better developed and extended in the future to include online sales.

The organisation also now has an Instagram account because, apparently, everyone must now have one.

Sally and Jo, our other new trustee, have been busy scheduling the work required on developing the various activities we are going to offer both before and after reopening next year.

On the volunteering front, I was sadly unable to join the two groups working on research and archiving but my colleagues are now well entrenched on the programme.

Lorna, another of our volunteers, has also been enthusiastically working on the Artists in Museums programme run by Museum Development East Midlands.

As its name suggests, this involves a six-month course learning how best to work with artists to add an extra dimension for visitors to the centre.

With Wirksworth’s extensive band of artists and artistic activities that is an obvious fit for our future plans.

In addition, we are contemplating the Wirksworth Festival, which is now only a month away on 9th September.

We haven’t been able to host an artist this year but we are hoping that we can get involved by doing something in the courtyard if it is not occupied by a builder’s skip.

I guess the pace will only get quicker from here onwards.