It’s hard to believe that five years have passed since
August 2012 when 53 volunteers were recruited, by the then Heritage Motor
Centre, as part of their lottery funded campaign for the building of a new
Collections Centre. During that time we have carried out full vehicle surveys
of every vehicle in the collection and all relevant mechanical data, renovated
cars and engines, attended shows and exhibitions and worked on an oral history
project. Then in February 2016, we finally became guides at the new Collections
Centre.
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The class of 2012 in
the motorsport section of the main Museum
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Of the original volunteers, 27 remain actively involved at
what is now the British Motor Museum, in some or all of the above activities.
To recognise our five years of service the Museum, and its Managing Director
Julie Tew, kindly invited us all to a reception recently where we were all
thanked for our dedicated service and help. Twenty three of us were able to
attend and were presented with a certificate and a five year service badge,
followed by tea/coffee and a specially made, rather large chocolate cake.
It should be pointed out that since the Collections Centre
opened in 2016 and with an increasing number of visitors, a lot more volunteers
have now been recruited. We now number around 80, allowing four guides per day
to be on duty for the full seven days of the week that the Museum is now open.
The
cake, in all its glory is shown above, together with Julie Tew presenting
Oliver White with his certificate and badge. Oliver incidentally has in fact
been a volunteer for over 11 years, having started well before the current
volunteer programme began. He’s a former BBC editor who spends a lot of his
time in the sorting and labelling of film material for the archives department.
The
awards news doesn’t end there though, as for the second year running, the
British Motor Museum had two entries accepted for the annual West Midlands
Museum Development Volunteer Awards. The ceremony was hosted by BBC presenter
Sarah Bishop at the Birmingham Hippodrome on 19th September. Volunteer
Mark Bradbury was nominated for the individual “Above and Beyond” category for
his work in moving, collating and displaying the Museum’s artefacts, whilst
Vince Hall was nominated in the “Collections” category for his work leading the
oral history team and in particular for all the editing he has undertaken. Both
finalists received recognition of their achievements from the judges with Vince
declared the worthy winner of his category.
Above
are some members of the oral history group alongside one of the recently
installed audio consoles in the main Museum. Vince is in the pale blue jumper
knealing at the front and his Winners’ tile plaque is shown on the right.
