Brook Rural Museum –, “Securing the Future of The Brook Museum” and “Reaching Out into Our Communities”

Client: Wye Rural Museum Trust
Dates: 2022-2025
Budget: £75,686 (2022-2023); £88,294 (2024-2025)
Project: “Securing the Future of The Brook Museum” and “Reaching Out into Our Communities”
The Brook Rural Museum, managed by the Wye Rural Museum Trust, is a historic site in Kent that includes a Grade I listed medieval barn and Grade II listed Oast House, both integral to the village’s agricultural heritage. Established in 1996, the museum houses a significant collection of Kentish agricultural artefacts. To secure its future and engage new audiences the Trust applied for a grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for their project “Securing the future of the Brook Museum”. This has now been followed by a second project, “Reaching out into our communities,” building on their initial success.
“Securing the future of the Brook Museum” focused on strengthening collections management, increasing audience engagement through a new public programme of events and raising awareness of the museum. This laid the groundwork for “Reaching out into our communities”, which has continued to broaden the museum’s impact across Ashford by enhancing the museum’s visibility, building new partnerships with schools, care homes, and charities, and creating a sustainable business model for the museum. Planned activities include temporary exhibitions, reminiscence activities at local care homes, workshops with schools and more public events to foster deeper community connections with rural heritage.
Alix Slater Consultancy supported the Trustees with both of their funding applications. She was also appointed as an evaluation consultant. During the last three years she has supported the Trustees and staff in developing logic models, tracking progress, trying different methods of evaluating activities to demonstrate impact and using evaluation to learn lessons along the way to improve delivery.