Scarborough's museums have seen big changes in the past few years, the most obvious being the £4m redevelopment of the Rotunda, which is renowned for its geological collection and reopens this month.
But it's all been happening behind the scenes as well, with the move to trust status in January and last year's appointment of a new chief executive, Shirley Collier.
Much of Collier's time has been taken up with the two big changes - the Rotunda opening and the move to trust status, although both plans were already well underway when she joined.
"The major decisions about the move to trust status had already been made, but there was a hell of a lot of detail to sort out," Collier says. "And I can't take any credit for the Rotunda - I arrived just in time to organise the party, which is great."
Collier is not averse to a bit of partying, and it is this public-facing side of her career that she came to Scarborough to develop after spending all of her previous time in collections management, most recently as the deputy director of collections at the Imperial War Museum. Like others in the sector, a period of self-assessment and a move to a new job was prompted by a place on the Clore Leadership Programme.
"At the time, I don't think I was particularly interested in changing my job but I did want to change my life. I wanted to be sure I was heading in the right direction. I had made this very solid progression through collections management and I've always said I wanted to be a director of a national museum and that is where my sights were, but I think it was a good idea to take a bit of a rain check.
"I was 35 and I wanted to spend some time looking at where I wanted to be going. The Clore programme was very useful for that and gave me exactly what I wanted."
Collier says one of the important things Clore gave her was the chance to better understand herself and her personality and how that related to her career.
"One of the things I've really explored during the Clore programme, was what felt at the time a bit like a split personality. On the one hand is collections management, which can be quite controlling, analytical and inward-looking and the other half of my personality is much more extrovert, and loves parties and being out there and I was not doing any of that.
"After the Clore year, when I had the chance to be completely myself, it was very clear that my next job had to be somewhere that could satisfy both parts of me."
Collier, who says her school years involved "lots of music and no museums", got her first paid job in the sector as disposals coordinator at the National Maritime Museum. Although the pop groups Duran Duran and Culture Club might have had more appeal when she was younger, once she decided she wanted to work in museums, Collier really went for it.
A year of voluntary work included spells at the Ashmolean in Oxford, London's Guildhall Art Gallery and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which was supported by stacking shelves at the Co-op by night.
After the maritime museum, Collier then went on to work at Tate, the Royal Air Force Museum and the British Film Institute. But it was the Imperial War Museum (IWM), which she joined in 2000, that had the most profound impact on her career.
One important influence was the war museum's director of collections, Jane Carmichael, who is now at National Museums Scotland. Collier says they worked closely together and Carmichael gave her the freedom to develop the collections management department.
And later on, after she returned from the Clore course, the IWM's director general, Robert Crawford, played a part in her development.
"When I came back, I talked to Robert Crawford, who said that if I still wanted to be a director of a national, it would be a good idea to cut my teeth on something small, because then it would only be a question of scale. He thought it was important for me to test out whether I really wanted to do that, and this would be easier in a small organisation. I thought that was really good advice."
Scarborough seemed to fit the bill in terms of size, and the fact that it is now a trust (albeit funded by the borough council) also appealed to Collier. She is already talking the language of the independent sector.
"I wanted to be somewhere nimble and dynamic and in the independent sector you are encouraged to take more risks, to be more entrepreneurial. As far as I'm concerned, I'm here to run a business, a highly specialised one, but a business nonetheless.
"Some people in our sector pour scorn on this, as though business is some simplistic, dirty process which they can separate themselves from. All this does is make other people's jobs harder and of course it's simply not true."
Collier's energy and ambition will certainly have an impact on Scarborough Museums and its staff. She is starting to oversee some new appointments, with the trust advertising recently for a learning manager; a marketing and business development officer; and an office manager. These appointments will take the number on the team to 17.5, which includes 5.5 front-of-house staff.
The job is not without its challenges for Collier, and some extra help will surely be welcome, particularly now the Rotunda is reopening this month.
"The job is what I expected, but it is more extreme. The good stuff is very, very good, the bad stuff is hard. It is just me, or it feels like it sometimes."
Scarborough itself is also a reasonably challenging environment to work in, having many of the problems associated with other UK coastal resorts, such as competition from overseas tourism and general economic decline. This is summed up by the Grand Hotel, which overlooks the Rotunda.
When it opened in 1867 it was grand in every sense. It was so large that a mini-railway was installed to take linen from one end of the building to the other, while high levels of service and cuisine were in the hands of a manager who came from a renowned Paris hotel.
More than 140 years later, it offers cheap two for-one lunch deals and has closed a number of times in recent years after outbreaks of a virus that made guests ill. But Scarborough, like other seaside towns, is not standing still and is working hard to regenerate itself.
"Scarborough has been part of Urban Renaissance [a government scheme managed by the Regional Development Agencies to improve the quality of life in cities and towns] and is one of ten towns in this region that has benefited from Urban Renaissance money," Collier says. "Scarborough is the most successful of those ten as it has moved furthest forward in that time."
The museums trust is an important part of the town's cultural regeneration. The council is currently working on a £4.8m plan to create the Wood End Creative Industries Centre, which is being developed in the building formerly occupied by the Wood End Museum.
A range of creative businesses will occupy the site, but Scarborough Museums will be the largest single tenant and will use the new centre for office space, storage and education. Further down the line is the possible redevelopment of the trust's art gallery.
"If we can help in re-establishing Scarborough in people's minds as a high-quality, high class place to be, a place to be proud of, that will be an achievement," Collier says.
Achieving something at Scarborough is important to Collier, even though the job looks like a stepping stone on her path back to a national museum.
"I have never left a job without having achieved something quite significant and I would really not consider moving from here until I have achieved that. Ultimately I would like to go and run something bigger, but at the moment I am not in a hurry to rush off and do it."
But it's all been happening behind the scenes as well, with the move to trust status in January and last year's appointment of a new chief executive, Shirley Collier.
Much of Collier's time has been taken up with the two big changes - the Rotunda opening and the move to trust status, although both plans were already well underway when she joined.
"The major decisions about the move to trust status had already been made, but there was a hell of a lot of detail to sort out," Collier says. "And I can't take any credit for the Rotunda - I arrived just in time to organise the party, which is great."
Collier is not averse to a bit of partying, and it is this public-facing side of her career that she came to Scarborough to develop after spending all of her previous time in collections management, most recently as the deputy director of collections at the Imperial War Museum. Like others in the sector, a period of self-assessment and a move to a new job was prompted by a place on the Clore Leadership Programme.
"At the time, I don't think I was particularly interested in changing my job but I did want to change my life. I wanted to be sure I was heading in the right direction. I had made this very solid progression through collections management and I've always said I wanted to be a director of a national museum and that is where my sights were, but I think it was a good idea to take a bit of a rain check.
"I was 35 and I wanted to spend some time looking at where I wanted to be going. The Clore programme was very useful for that and gave me exactly what I wanted."
Collier says one of the important things Clore gave her was the chance to better understand herself and her personality and how that related to her career.
"One of the things I've really explored during the Clore programme, was what felt at the time a bit like a split personality. On the one hand is collections management, which can be quite controlling, analytical and inward-looking and the other half of my personality is much more extrovert, and loves parties and being out there and I was not doing any of that.
"After the Clore year, when I had the chance to be completely myself, it was very clear that my next job had to be somewhere that could satisfy both parts of me."
Collier, who says her school years involved "lots of music and no museums", got her first paid job in the sector as disposals coordinator at the National Maritime Museum. Although the pop groups Duran Duran and Culture Club might have had more appeal when she was younger, once she decided she wanted to work in museums, Collier really went for it.
A year of voluntary work included spells at the Ashmolean in Oxford, London's Guildhall Art Gallery and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which was supported by stacking shelves at the Co-op by night.
After the maritime museum, Collier then went on to work at Tate, the Royal Air Force Museum and the British Film Institute. But it was the Imperial War Museum (IWM), which she joined in 2000, that had the most profound impact on her career.
One important influence was the war museum's director of collections, Jane Carmichael, who is now at National Museums Scotland. Collier says they worked closely together and Carmichael gave her the freedom to develop the collections management department.
And later on, after she returned from the Clore course, the IWM's director general, Robert Crawford, played a part in her development.
"When I came back, I talked to Robert Crawford, who said that if I still wanted to be a director of a national, it would be a good idea to cut my teeth on something small, because then it would only be a question of scale. He thought it was important for me to test out whether I really wanted to do that, and this would be easier in a small organisation. I thought that was really good advice."
Scarborough seemed to fit the bill in terms of size, and the fact that it is now a trust (albeit funded by the borough council) also appealed to Collier. She is already talking the language of the independent sector.
"I wanted to be somewhere nimble and dynamic and in the independent sector you are encouraged to take more risks, to be more entrepreneurial. As far as I'm concerned, I'm here to run a business, a highly specialised one, but a business nonetheless.
"Some people in our sector pour scorn on this, as though business is some simplistic, dirty process which they can separate themselves from. All this does is make other people's jobs harder and of course it's simply not true."
Collier's energy and ambition will certainly have an impact on Scarborough Museums and its staff. She is starting to oversee some new appointments, with the trust advertising recently for a learning manager; a marketing and business development officer; and an office manager. These appointments will take the number on the team to 17.5, which includes 5.5 front-of-house staff.
The job is not without its challenges for Collier, and some extra help will surely be welcome, particularly now the Rotunda is reopening this month.
"The job is what I expected, but it is more extreme. The good stuff is very, very good, the bad stuff is hard. It is just me, or it feels like it sometimes."
Scarborough itself is also a reasonably challenging environment to work in, having many of the problems associated with other UK coastal resorts, such as competition from overseas tourism and general economic decline. This is summed up by the Grand Hotel, which overlooks the Rotunda.
When it opened in 1867 it was grand in every sense. It was so large that a mini-railway was installed to take linen from one end of the building to the other, while high levels of service and cuisine were in the hands of a manager who came from a renowned Paris hotel.
More than 140 years later, it offers cheap two for-one lunch deals and has closed a number of times in recent years after outbreaks of a virus that made guests ill. But Scarborough, like other seaside towns, is not standing still and is working hard to regenerate itself.
"Scarborough has been part of Urban Renaissance [a government scheme managed by the Regional Development Agencies to improve the quality of life in cities and towns] and is one of ten towns in this region that has benefited from Urban Renaissance money," Collier says. "Scarborough is the most successful of those ten as it has moved furthest forward in that time."
The museums trust is an important part of the town's cultural regeneration. The council is currently working on a £4.8m plan to create the Wood End Creative Industries Centre, which is being developed in the building formerly occupied by the Wood End Museum.
A range of creative businesses will occupy the site, but Scarborough Museums will be the largest single tenant and will use the new centre for office space, storage and education. Further down the line is the possible redevelopment of the trust's art gallery.
"If we can help in re-establishing Scarborough in people's minds as a high-quality, high class place to be, a place to be proud of, that will be an achievement," Collier says.
Achieving something at Scarborough is important to Collier, even though the job looks like a stepping stone on her path back to a national museum.
"I have never left a job without having achieved something quite significant and I would really not consider moving from here until I have achieved that. Ultimately I would like to go and run something bigger, but at the moment I am not in a hurry to rush off and do it."
Shirley Collier at a glance
Shirley Collier's first paid museum job started in 1992 as the disposals coordinator at the National Maritime Museum.
She then worked at Tate, the Royal Air Force Museum and the British Film Institute, before joining the Imperial War Museum in 2000.
She was the deputy director of collections when she left the war museum in 2007 to join Scarborough Museums as its chief executive.
She has a diploma in museum studies from the University of Leicester and is a trustee of the Ragged School Museum in London.
Collier grew up in rural Bedforshire and studied French and Italian at the University of Exeter
Shirley Collier's first paid museum job started in 1992 as the disposals coordinator at the National Maritime Museum.
She then worked at Tate, the Royal Air Force Museum and the British Film Institute, before joining the Imperial War Museum in 2000.
She was the deputy director of collections when she left the war museum in 2007 to join Scarborough Museums as its chief executive.
She has a diploma in museum studies from the University of Leicester and is a trustee of the Ragged School Museum in London.
Collier grew up in rural Bedforshire and studied French and Italian at the University of Exeter
