30. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
16th May 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
12-16 May 2025
I’m in the final two weeks of getting phase 1 of our writers in residents exhibition finished, and off to the printers so it has been a week of proofing, uploading content for QR codes, tweaking copy, checking things, checking them again, sending emails, chasing invoices and ticking things off my mega list (and adding more things to it). Suffice to say it is all feeling very positive.
Hearing the professionally recorded play written by Georgia Affonso was a great way to start the week for me, and Ellie started the week with a very intimate wedding in the Study on Monday!
On Tuesday Katy held the Tea Room Development Group meeting and I welcomed a cohort from Stockport Museums for a chat about Bloomberg Connect, admission pricing and lots of other things. It’s good to share, especially amongst museum folk.
Volunteer, Jane M, fitted in some more book cataloguing and we discussed which books and periodicals from the collection that we could use alongside the writers work. There is always an element of going down an Elizabeth Gaskell shaped rabbit hole every time we do this.
Wednesday we had plenty of volunteers, but not very many visitors, and on Thursday lots of visitors and not nearly enough volunteers – but we managed! Katy was out at a meeting all day, so Gaby and I juggled Tea Room and front desk between us and I miraculously managed to do some odd bits of work in between, including editing a video message from our Patron Judi Dench to send to our Friends – more on that next week!
Following the news about the funding last week, and thanks to Lynda writing the brief, we sent out a call-out to artists and writers to deliver a series of workshops aimed at families over the summer holidays and I pulled together a project plan for us all to work to.
I stayed late on Thursday for the two Board meetings and then on Friday whilst I worked at home (doing more exhibition editing and uploading), Gaby and Ellie set up for the second of three weddings we have booked in May this year (this will be Gaby’s first wedding and Ellie’s second in one week!)
Short but sweet this week, there’s too much to do.
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
