This year the Museums in Cambridgeshire organisation have launched an Awards scheme for museums in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, with five award categories open to all museums in the area.

St Neots Museum are delighted to announce that at the Awards Ceremony, held at the Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, on Monday 4th November they received two Highly Commended awards and won the Small Museum of the Year award, for museums with up to 10,000 visitors per annum.

Our two highly commended awards were, firstly to our hardworking documentation volunteer, Jean Stratford who was Highly Commended in the Heritage Heroes category and secondly for our Jailbreak Escape Room project, run jointly with Simon and Jenny Cooper of ‘Mystery in History’ which was Highly Commended in the ‘New for You’ category.

The judges included regional museum professionals as well as a ‘mystery visitor’ who paid an unanounced visit to the museum to see how we measured up in real life! In awarding St Neots Museum the Cambridgeshire Small Museum of the Year Award the judges said of the museum:

The museum team have worked tirelessly to improve every area of museum operation, generating new income streams in the process. They’ve developed effective new partnerships, become more involved in setting local priorities and have made welcome the many new communities springing up on their doorstep. This incredible team monitor and evaluate their work, feeding lessons and recommendations from professional advisors into their planning for the future. Although limited in capacity, their achievements over the past year make them truly deserving of the title ‘Museum of the Year’.

Liz Davies, Curator and Lesley Sainsbury, Learning and Development Officer said:

We are absolutely thrilled to have won this award which is recognition of the hard work of all the museums dedicated volunteers, Trustees and Management Committee and of our many other supporters in the community from artists to business people who contribute to our success in so many ways – without them we could not have achieved this award