Voyage of discovery - Museums Association

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Voyage of discovery

Simon Stephens talks to Gill Poulter about how Dundee Heritage Trust is making the most of the city's maritime and textile history
Having a view of a building site is, for Gill Poulter, a concrete indication of how much Dundee is changing.
Poulter has been working in the city for 20 years and is currently the heritage and exhibitions director of Dundee Heritage Trust. She is based at Discovery Point, one of two museums that the organisation operates in the city. The other is Verdant Works, which tells the story of Dundee’s textile industry, primarily focusing on the use of the natural fibre jute.
Discovery Point is on the waterfront and is named after the historic ship RRS Discovery, which sits alongside the museum. This whole area is undergoing a £1bn redevelopment that includes the planned £45m V&A at Dundee, which is due for completion in 2016. 
“We are surrounded by building sites and that is something that we are concerned about in terms of the effect on visitor numbers and our conference business,” Poulter says. 

“There is no doubt that when it’s finished it will be amazing and will transform the waterfront area, which we are at the heart of. But it is something we have to get through over the next two or three years.”
Poulter is working on plans to redevelop Discovery Point to take advantage of the opportunities created by the V&A at Dundee and the improved infrastructure.
RRS Discovery
“We are very conscious that we are going to have a beautiful new building next to us, heavily publicly subsidised, and undoubtedly we need to invest in the building here, the galleries and the ship,” Poulter says.
The trust has been working with Gareth Hoskins Architects on a masterplan for the site. The aim is to spend about £4m on a scheme that will create a new cafe, more galleries and an education suite. Conservation work on RRS Discovery is also needed.
The Discovery was built in Dundee in 1901 for Antarctic research and its first mission was the British National Antarctic Expedition, which carried polar explorers Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton. Poulter says the ongoing care of the Discovery is one of the trust’s biggest issues. 
Discovery Point opened in 1993, the year before Poulter became involved with the trust. The ship had returned to Dundee in 1986 on loan from the Maritime Trust, which cared for a number of historic ships in London. When Dundee Heritage Trust bought the Discovery, for the nominal price of £1, it also gained a substantial collection that had been stored at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
“I vividly remember hiring a transit van, and myself and a colleague driving to London, loading up all these boxes of stuff, and bringing it all back,” Poulter says. “It was fantastic.”
The new material gave Poulter the chance to transform the galleries at Discovery Point. “When it opened it was more of a visitor attraction than a museum as the trust had very minimal collections of its own related to polar exploration and the history of the ship,” Poulter says. “That all changed dramatically with the acquisition of the ship.”
Verdant Works development
Poulter has lots of experience of capital projects and gallery developments. Her first role in Dundee was to create a museum at Verdant Works, a former mill built in 1833. The mill was part of the city’s jute industry, which at its peak in the 1900s employed 50,000 people, half of Dundee’s population.
Poulter came to Dundee to become the city council’s heritage officer but was seconded four days a week to the Dundee Heritage Trust to develop Verdant Works. The project became one of the first to receive money from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), which was set up in 1994. Poulter has since secured a range of HLF grants for the trust including, most recently, nearly £1.9m for a £3m scheme to redevelop the remaining derelict buildings at Verdant Works. 
“Our organisation has been struggling to find a use for those buildings for the past 20 years,” Poulter says. “It was becoming quite a serious liability for us.”
Various options were looked at including selling the site or developing the buildings into workshops, offices and student flats. The decision was finally made to retain ownership and expand the museum offer. The scheme will gut the High Mill building and create a three-storey high space that will include displays and a space for events. 
Poulter is working on partnerships with many of Dundee’s cultural institutions to develop a programme that will include dance, theatre, music and art. Work started on the scheme in May for completion in summer next year.
“When you go in at the ground floor you will be in a sort of cathedral-height building – it will be an incredible and unique space,” Poulter says. “We hope it will increase our visitor numbers, which will increase our income, but it will also have very low ongoing maintenance and running costs.”
Poulter joined the trust full-time when her contract at Dundee City Council ended in 1998. She says her role at the organisation has changed a lot over the years as its work has expanded. 
There was a big restructuring 12 years ago when the chief executive’s post was made redundant and replaced by a three-person executive team. Poulter shares the management role with operations director Mark Munsie and finance director Phil Turner.
“We all have our own areas of responsibility but we collectively oversee the strategy and direction of the organisation and make decisions together,” Poulter says. “We work together very well and were are all of a similar mind in terms of the direction for the organisation.”
Poulter started her career at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, which she says was an excellent first job. It was a new graduate trainee post in human history.
“Perth Museum is one of the oldest museums in the UK and it has amazing collections. In the human history department we were covering everything, archaeology, social history, numismatics, photography, archive, costume – it is a classic local history museum, but with really high-quality collections. I had a great boss, Sue Payne, who gave me a marvellous grounding.”
Independent sector
Despite her positive experience at Perth, after more than 15 years working for Dundee Heritage Trust, Poulter is committed to the independent museum sector. She is the Scottish representative for the Association of Independent Museums and recently set up a Scottish committee for the organisation. 
“I started my career in the local authority sector but I’m not sure I could go back as I just love the freedom of independent museums,” Poulter says. “What I love about working in the independent sector is that lack of bureaucracy, the freedom to innovate and, if you have an idea, you just go and put it into practice.”
Poulter says the trust is very visitor-focused and is extremely commercially minded. It earns about 95% of its revenue and only receives about £60,000 from the city council. Poulter also says that working at a relatively small organisation gives her the chance to get involved in many areas of museum work, including collections.
“I don’t think I can even see myself wanting to completely let go of the collections side of my work,” Poulter says. “I don’t do things like accessioning or object cleaning any more but I’m still very much involved. It’s quite nice having that dual role of developing strategy, fundraising and masterplanning but still knowing if we’ve had a lovely new donation.”
With the development at Verdant Works and the plans for Discovery Point, there will continue to be lots of opportunities for Poulter to be involved in fundraising, strategy and collections. And this will all be in the context of a city that is fast-developing a cultural offer that others will look enviously at. 
Poulter says the cultural venues are being backed up by improved infrastructure, particularly a raft of new hotels. The Malmaison that recently opened close to Discovery Point in a building that had been unused for 20 years is one of many signs of change.

Even a failed city of culture bid has not dampened spirits and Dundee is now considering applying to become a Unesco City of Design and is also looking at a possible European Capital of Culture bid for 2023.
“The failed city of culture bid was very disappointing, a huge amount of work went into it, but some of the feedback was that Dundee was already doing very well,” Poulter says. “But the city is still full of ambition and drive.”
Poulter is now looking forward to the important role that Dundee Heritage Trust can play within this.
Gill Poulter at a glance
Gill Poulter started her career in 1990 at Perth Museum and Art Gallery as a graduate trainee in human history.
She then joined Dundee City Council as its industrial heritage officer, where she worked at McManus Galleries. She was also seconded fours days a week to the Dundee Heritage Trust.
She joined Dundee Heritage Trust full-time in 1997. She is now its heritage and exhibitions director.
Poulter sits as the Scottish representative on the Council for the Association of Independent Museums committee and was a member of the group that helped establish Scotland’s national museum strategy in 2012.
Dundee Heritage Trust at a glance
Dundee Heritage Trust and its operating company Dundee Industrial Heritage Limited are both registered charities formed in 1985 to preserve and interpret Dundee’s industrial past.
The trust is responsible for the Discovery Point Antarctic Museum, which includes the historic ship RRS Discovery, and Scotland’s Jute Museum @ Verdant Works. The trust’s venues attract 190,000 visitors a year. It has two Recognised Collections of National Significance related to RRS Discovery and polar exploration and Dundee’s textile industry.
The trust recently secured a £1.9m HLF grant for a £3m scheme to redevelop the remaining derelict buildings at Verdant Works.
Dundee Heritage Trust employs the full-time equivalent of 38 people. It receives an annual grant of about £60,000 from Dundee City Council and raises the remaining 95% of its running costs through commercial activity, such as ticket sales, conferences and retailing, and fundraising initiatives, including corporate and charitable trust support.



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