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The Scottish Fisheries Museum's nationally recognised collection set to benefit from nationwide conservation project

12th November 2021

The Scottish Fisheries Museum is set to benefit from a new nationwide project addressing a decrease in conservation skills and ensuring the country’s most important and at risk industrial artefacts are saved for future generations.

The Scottish Fisheries Museum, on Anstruther Harbour in the East Neuk of Fife, is part of the two year Powering Our People project launched by Industrial Museums Scotland.

The £230,000 Powering Our People project will ensure all 14 members of the federation of Scotland’s independent industrial museums, including the Scottish Fisheries Museum, have a trained and knowledgeable workforce, best equipped to care for their Nationally Significant collections, now and into the future.

The move comes after a skills review led by Industrial Museums Scotland, and engaging employees and volunteers, confirmed that funding cuts over recent years have led to fewer staff and an increasing shortage of specialist training.

Through the project, Industrial Museums Scotland will employ a conservator and industrial conservation intern to work alongside 100 member employees and volunteers to develop skills, particularly in the care of large industrial objects, important paper archives and innovative and historic engines.

The project, which will also benefit the wider industrial heritage sector, will centre on training, workplace exchanges, a conference and shadowing a conservator, as well as creating online resources to benefit the future workforce.

The Powering Our People project has been generously supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Museum Galleries Scotland, the Pilgrim Trust, Historic Environment Scotland, the Headley Trust and the Gordon Fraser Charitable Trust.

Welcoming the Powering Our People project, Ian Goodyear, Director of the Scottish Fisheries Museum says:

“We are grateful to funders for supporting this major legacy project for Scotland’s industrial museums.

“During the course of the project, the Scottish Fisheries Museum will benefit greatly by gaining key skills and, across Scotland, the care of our amazing and nationally important industrial heritage will become more sustainable into the future.”