Leicestershire County Council’s Museums have performed to a high standard during the 2010/11 year, with major awards and achievements across all service areas.

Museums provide popular exhibitions, events and learning experiences for local residents and tourists from the UK and abroad. The museums have many special collections which make Leicestershire famous across the world and give the county its unique identity. All County Council museums operate to the highest standards possible and care for the museum collections for future generations, holding these in trust, for the people of Leicestershire.

In 2010/11

Over 700,000 people visited museums in the county
Over 315,000 people visited County Council-run museums: Snibston, Charnwood Museum, Donington le Heath Manor House, Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre, Melton Carnegie Museum, the Collections Resources Centre and Harborough Museum
An additional 346,390 visited our museums online and used the learning and other e-resources available
The Open Museum saw a 50% increase from 142,000 usages in 2009/10 to 214,588 in 2010/11
Over 60,000 people enjoyed events at our sites
Over 31,650 school children visited our museums in organised school groups as part of National Curriculum learning
Our customer satisfaction surveys show very high satisfaction rates – with overall enjoyment at our museums rated at over 97%
99% of our visitors would recommend our museum sites to friends, colleagues and relatives
Museum staff provided over 100 community talks and events to local groups on subjects such as archaeology, art, social history and natural history
Over 350 volunteers work regularly for the museums and many more local people support museums in different ways, fundraising, as Friends and arranging local events
Over 400,000 visitors enjoyed the range of local, community and independent museums, supported through the County Council, and delivered by many more volunteers and members of the community county-wide

Awards and National Recognition

The County Council is recognised as a national leader in community museums. It leads a regional programme for museum development throughout the East Midlands in conjunction with the Renaissance programme and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
During 2010, Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre was awarded the Gold Award for the Best Small Visitor Attraction and Best Visitor Experience.
Snibston won the Gold Enjoy England Think Family Award and the Silver Award in the Access for All category
Snibston, is a regional ‘Flagship’ in the Renaissance programme, and won the Champion of Champions at the Arts and Business Jaguar Land Rover Awards
All museums maintained the nationally recognised standards of VAQAS and Museums Accreditation, which are awarded to high performing museums. Melton Carnegie Museum and Bosworth Battlefield host exhibition spaces to ‘National Indemnity’ standards, enabling exhibitions from National collections to be shown locally
The six Leicestershire County Council Museums make a total economic impact of £7.1 million contributing to the County’s tourism economy
All museum sites were awarded the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge

For additional information, please see Museum Awards

External Funding

In 2010/11, over £2.5m has been awarded by funding partners to enhance our museums and a further £3m ‘earmarked’ towards Snibston’s ‘Mining Lives’. The service is extremely successful in attracting external funding to improve and develop services for local people. The Treasure Project at Harborough Museum, Melton Carnegie Museum and the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and trail, could not have been achieved without our funders and sponsors. £800,000 was allocated from the Renaissance programme and £120,000 for the Transform Arts project with the Arts Council

A five year external funding strategy working with the Heritage Lottery Fund could lever in over £15 million by 2016.

Economic Impact

During 2010...

Leicestershire County Council’s museums contributed £9.57 million to the £1.3 billion tourism economy in the county. Tourist days generated by these museums also rose to nearly 250,000.

Harborough Museum, Market Harborough contributed £690,000 impact to the local area, with the equivalent of 9 full time jobs created outside of the museum due to the economic impact and showed an overall increase of 150% impact .

Snibston Discovery Museum, Coalville contributed a significant £3.94 million economic impact to the local area, with strong economic growth of 33%, with the equivalent of 48 full time jobs existing due to the economic contribution in addition to staff directly employed by the award winning attraction.

Bosworth Battlefield at Sutton Cheney near to Market Bosworth has made a £1.63 million economic impact on the local area, with an increase of 14% and contributing to the equivalent of 21 full time jobs, as well as those employed by this nationally significant site.

Melton Carnegie Museum at Melton Mowbray has had a £640,000 impact on the local area, enjoying a great increase of 1688% following re-opening after its HLF funded transformation,with the equivalent of 8 FTE jobs existing due to the economic impact plus staff employed at the site.

Charnwood Museum at Loughborough contributed £1.61 million to the local area and 21 full time jobs exist due to this economic impact in addition to staff directly employed at this popular family attraction.

Donington le Heath Manor House Museum at Hugglescote, near Coalville contributed £1.06 million impact to the local area, increasing by 11% with the equivalent of 13 full time jobs existing due to the economic impact and employing its own staff directly.