16. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
3rd February 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, blogsNnews, Gaskell House Blogs
27-30 January 2025
Work has begun in earnest on the museum content for the Bloomberg Connect App and its where Ellie and I have spent a lot of our time this week. We had more meetings/training, maps to sort, images to upload and captions to write. My aim is to work on it for an hour a day but I’m also working on two funding applications at the same time plius the usual day-to-day issues. Procrastination wise working on the The Bloomsberg Connect App is a lot more enjoyable than writing funding applications I can tell you.
Lucy and I joined a SEO webinar run by Visit England at lunchtime on Tuesday. Picked up a few tips and things to improve on going forward, plus it was good to note the things we are already doing well content wise like our regular blogs from volunteers and staff. I made a list a blog ideas and emailed some volunteers to see if they were interested. As a result Elle wrote a lovely blog about the new Miss Austen adaptation starting on Sunday.
The anticipated price rises were made this week to Tea Room food and drink items, and the new ‘spring’ retail stock went out, beautifully displayed by Katy in two new displays themed around valentines. (see below). Lots of compliments to Katy from the volunteers. As has been the trend recently Wednesday and Thursday was fairly quiet visitor wise, although those visitors that did come stayed longer than the usual average visit length of 1-2 hours.
On Wednesday afternoon I attended the launch of the Greater Manchester Visitor Economy Strategy at the Midland Hotel in the city center. Sir Chris Bryant, the Tourism Minister, opened the event (photo below), but key thing for me was that one of the five targets is that Manchester will be ranked as the most sustainable English city in the UK and in the top 50 in the world on the Global Destination Sustainability Index.
On Thursday afternoon I welcomed the leaders of the Pankhurst Centre and Victorian Baths to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House (because we are the warmest of the three venues at this time of year) for a meeting about how we can work better together going forward. (NB All three attractions are within 5 minute walk of each other – with lots of shared challenges in terms of size and offer).
Friday morning I had a meeting with Kids in Museums and some of the other museums taking part on the Young trustee Programme. We updated each other on our progress and discussed ways to champion what we have achieved and what the next steps could be.
On Friday afternoon Lynda and I drove over to the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth (its about a 1.20 hour drive) for the launch of their new exhibition (From Haworth to Eternity) and the opening of the long-waited toilet block. Its the 100 year anniversary of the museum in 2028 so they have waited along time to get these toilets, (which now in the 21st century also includes changing places facilities.). It was good to say hello to some of the team from the Parsonage (who we usually see on Zoom), to experience the new exhibition and to browse the gift shop. (I do love a good museum gift shop!)
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd




