Awards

Winners of 2008 Heritage Awards

Each year, the Forum hosts the annual Leicestershire & Rutland Heritage Awards.

Museums compete in categories including

• Best Exhibition
• Best Event
• Best Project
• Work with Children & Young Pepole
• Achievement Award
• Museum of the Year

Below are the entries into the 2009 Leicestershire & Rutland Heritage Awards!

Best Special Project
Ashby Museum	Celebrating a centenary	Ashby Museum worked with 3 classes of years 3 & 4 at Ashby C of E Primary School, under the Learning Links Project 2008, funded by MLA East Midlands. The primary aim was to develop educational partnerships. Teachers, parents, children and museum staff all helped to make this a fulfilling project.
Sir John Moore Foundation	Band Boot Camp	3 day music and technical school over Easter hols for teenagers. With workshops, demos, performance and rehearsal opportunities. A chance for new people to experience the historic venue and gain inspiration from it to develop their craft. 30 young people attended the first ever boot camp – over 60 additional people attended the performance on the last day. “Thank you to Find Your Talent who funded the event – it was the most amazing project to be involved in”.
Lutterworth Museum	Collections Notation and Storage	To collect together in groups artefacts, documents and photographs. Store in archival boxes and packaging onto shelving. Index box contents prior to entry onto database. To train volunteer team to carry out and complete project to accreditation standards.
Wigston Framework Knitters Museum	‘Cottage Garden’	This late 19th / early 20th century garden, which forms part of the premises at 42-44 Bushloe End, Wigston, is maintained by a small group of volunteers. It is a garden for all seasons much admired by visitors to the museum.
Rutland Railway Museum	“Belvoir” and Exton Park “DE5”	The museum has been actively working to improve its collection and in particular replace non-core exhibits with those which fit the central curatorial theme. Two of these projects are submitted as examples of our continued efforts to actively develop a Museum worthy of the heritage we are trying to preserve. Two locomotive exhibits have been secured for the collection both having an impeccable pedigree. One was secured through donation and members fund raising to return the locomotive to its original “engine shed”. The second project secured an exhibit at the site at which is was built and in due course we intend to operate the locomotive in the context to which it relates.
Leicester City Football Club	Foxes’ Footsteps	In the absence of an actual museum, the aim of ‘Foxes’ Footsteps’ was to communicate some of the contents of, and stories behind, LCFC’s extensive collection of carefully catalogued and digitised artefacts and documents to as many people as possible. This was done through a series of 28 articles called ‘Foxes’ Footsteps’ in the Matchday Programme. This is sold to fans on match day (the aggregate home attendance for the season was nearly half a million) and in newsagents across the city and county.

Best Exhibition
Kegworth Museum	In Search of the Ice Age in the Soar and Trent Valleys	The are around Kegworth has revealed artefacts from the Ice Age, approximately 500,000 years ago on onwards. A selection of antlers, bones, flints, axes and arrow heads are exhibited in context to paint a picture of the period – of the humanoids and animals who lived at this time.
Castle Donington Museum	Pleasures, Potions and Pastimes	A look at home and village life in the days before wi-fi, iPods and the welfare state. Carnivals and fair, home remedies, hobbies, touys & games familiar to all in the 1920s and ‘30s.
Foxton Canal Museum	Sound for the Museum	The addition of sound to our refurbished displays has added a new dimension to the museum, and an extra way of communicating with visitors who have limited sight.
Hallaton Museum	Rituals, Hoards and Helmets	A new exhibition telling the story of the discovery of the ‘Hallaton Treasure’ in photographs, text, displays and the words of the local amateur group who discovered it.
Ullesthorpe Windmill	Working Mill Models and milling processes	The continuing exhibition consists of 15-20 working mill models, shown on four separate occasions, 2008-9. Each occasion, more is built to a model for all to see and understand the development of mill construction and the processes by which grain is ground. Photographs of national mills complement the models.
Wigston Framework Knitters Museum	Knitting Machinery Maintenance Tool Case & Tools	Originally belonging to Bentley Engineering Co. Ltd. Leicester and donated to the trust. The case contains tools and needles to facilitate repair and maintenance of their knitting machines at home and abroad.
Rutland County Museum	Top to Toes: Vintage Fashion Accessories from the Museum Collection	The exhibition examined the history of some of the most popular fashion accessories from parasols, fans and gloves through to shoes, purses and bonnets. Most of the items, which came from the museum’s reserve collection, were on display for the first time.

Award for work with Children and Young People
Ashby Museum	Junior Friends of Ashby Museum (FoAM) – Launch and Development	Ashby Museum has had educational links with schools for over 20 years. Now its facilities allow it, a junior Friends of Ashby Museum has been former. Within a week 60 children had joined. A new era has begun.
Sir John Moore Foundation	Youth Engagement Programme	The Sir John Moore Foundation puts children and Young People at the heart of its mission. Originally it provided a school for village boys and it continues today providing education for all 5-11 year old children. Over the last year the Foundation has created opportunities for children and young people to get involved with a variety of activities outside school hours. These include opportunities for employment, volunteering, event management, decision making, and event participation. The children and young people involved range from very young children and continuing up into adulthood.
Moira Furnace Museum	Moira Furnace Museum Education Stratgey	Development of a strategy to improve the interpretation of the museum by children and young people and to increase the number of visits by local schools. This included the production of an education pack, linked to the requirements of the National Curriculum, and flyers highlighting the sites facilities.
Lutterworth Museum	Corporate Identity Project	To work in partnership with Lutterworth Community College Art & Design students to produce designs for publicity posters and literature and corporate headed notepaper for the museum.
Railway Vehicle Preservations	Mounsorrel Railway Project – Ecology Group	Project to restore the Mountsorrel quarry branch line, to get young people involved, and ensure work is ecologically sound, local schools have been invited to adopt a section of the formation.
Rutland County Museum	Bee Kind: Save the Bees	As part of National Science and Engineering Week, we held  a workshop to help save our bees. Children were invited to make their own plant pots and plant bee-friendly plants, learn about beekeeping by looking at a real beehive, listening to an experienced beekeeper and trying on a beekeeping suit. They also had the opportunity to make their own bees and taste local honey.

Best Special Event
Sir John Moore Foundation	Rat Pack Evening and Respect Award	The Rat Pack evening hosted by young people of the local area in the Great Hall at the Sir John Moore Foundation. This was the young people’s idea  and they planned, marketed, and executed the whole evening. A Respect Awards was gained from the District Council for this event and one individual young person received a special award.
Foxton Canal Museum	Fly Run	A temporary display celebrating 100 years of the refurbishment of Foxton Locls for night use and the ‘express delivery service’ on steam boats.
Ullesthorpe Windmill	Ancient Hand-Mills and Querns. Grain to flour to bread	This interactive event allows visitors to grind their own grain to flour on a Neolithic saddle quern, about 6,000 years old. There is an iron-age beehive quern (500BC) and three medieval  mortars, all to be used. New interpretation panels show some of these ancient technological objects in use today in many countries, in exactly the same way. We have also devised appropriate Quern Quizzes for two age groups and an archaeological drawing project. During the Summer we will be holding baking days in the mill yard, with other cultural tasting and activities.
Wigston Framework Knitters Museum	Sock Day	Each year, in August, the annual ‘sock ceremony’ is held. A presentation of a framed pair of Worsted Socks is presented to the Mayor of Oadby & Wigston by the patron to the trust, Sir Timothy Brooks, fomer Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire.
Hinckley Museum	Civil War Living History Day	A re-enactment of the life and times of a Leicestershire Parliamentarian Regiment during the English Civil War to enlighten and entertain museum visitiors.

Entries in the ‘Achievement Award’ category

North West Leicestershire

Castle Donington Museum Diseworth Heritage Trust Sir John Moore Foundation Swannington Heritage trust Whitwick Historical Group

Harborough

Foxton Canal Museum Hallaton Museum Lutterworth Museum Ullesthorpe Windmill

Charnwood

Loughborough War Memorial Museum Railway Vehicle Preservations

City

National Gas Museum Leicester Transport Heritage Trust

Rutland

Rutland County Museum Rutland Railway Museum