31. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
23rd May 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
19-23 May 2025
Quite a few big milestones this week. Firstly it was sign-off time for our new exhibition panels, which will now be printed ready for installation on 2 June at Manchester Central Library, so there was lots of concentrated proofing and checking (and checking again). Alongside this we had a press release going out and one of the writers recorded some social media content at the House. The other ‘big’ thing was sharing the Judi film, but more about that further down.
We hosted three school sessions at the start of the week from a school in Chorlton. They were brilliant and although I had to step in and lead two of the tours (I’m not nearly as good as our volunteers), I didn’t get any complaints and they said they would be rebooking for next year! Thank you to all the volunteers who lead the sessions.
On Monday our Friends newsletter went out packed with news and behind the scenes stories, as well as the sad news that one of our ex-trustees and longtime supporter, Ann O’Brien had sadly died.
We were still very quiet on the visitor front this week as the warm and sunny weather continues, but we did have enough volunteers. Speaking to other museums it does seem that we are not alone in this predicament. Complaining when the weather is too good for too long does feel like a very typically British thing to do! Our visitors in the past few weeks have largely been people on holiday or visiting Manchester so they’ve been mainly international and from outside the North-West. We’ve also had quite a few people, who were in Manchester to see Bruce Springsteen or Kylie in concert and included us in their itinerary.
Keeping with the international theme, Ellie and I, met up with our account contact at Bloomberg Connect on Wednesday via Zoom to review a few things and to look at the stats so far. I was fascinated to see that the guide has been viewed in Armenian, Portuguese and Italian!
On Thursday I finally shared the film message we had received from Dame Judi Dench, our patron, on our social media channels. Not going to lie – it was great seeing all the likes, shares and comments that came flooding in! (thank you Dame Judi)
Katy ran a larger than usual volunteer induction on Thursday (with a mix of micro and longer term volunteers) and we are looking forward to welcoming these new volunteers to the team very soon.
Friday was my last day before going on leave so mainly involved finishing lots of little jobs off – sharing the film on other channels, scheduling emails, authorising payments, checking in with people ahead of the exhibition opening and then making a big list for when I get back. The Chair of Trustees and I also met with a consultant to discuss the next steps towards writing a new business plan.
NB – Next week is half-term and the craft activity is making animal bookmarks!
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
