Steve Miller might be the chief executive of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust but his responsibilities go far beyond museums. In fact, he has a daunting range of concerns to oversee in an area that covers six sq miles of the Shropshire countryside and has been a World Heritage Site for more than 25 years.
As well as the 10 museums, Ironbridge also has a research library, tourist information centre, two youth hostels, archaeological sites, historic woodlands, housing, two chapels and two Quaker burial grounds.
“The job is very varied and it’s a lot more varied than I anticipated when I came,” says Miller, who moved to Ironbridge from Cheshire’s Norton Priory Museum Trust in 2006. “It was a big step up in terms of size. Everything is 10 times bigger.”
But Miller says that what helped him cope with the increased scale was that he had been following a similar operational model at Norton Priory that combined income generation with community engagement.
“We are a national tourist attraction, a large independent museum, we are very entrepreneurial, but we are also deeply rooted in our communities.”
Miller says that outreach has been an important part of his work ever since he got his first job in the sector when he joined Stockport Council as a community heritage officer in 1996.
“I mean real community engagement, of a proper substantial kind, not just tokenism but making yourselves indispensable to your communities, making it feel like it is their site and their museum. That is really important to me.”
Community engagement
This is achieved at Ironbridge in a number of ways. Locals get a 40% discount on entry and volunteers are also important. There are about 70,000 school visits a year and the trust employs about 160 people, with many living nearby.
And the organisation has a variety of partnerships with local businesses and charities as well as two local councils.
“If we don’t feel properly rooted in our communities we are going to have problems in the future,” says Miller. “It is how we bring all those elements together that is the fundamental joy of the job.”
Miller had a number of priorities when he started at Ironbridge, including a desire by the trust’s board to deepen the organisation’s relationship with local communities. There was also a key capital project – the £12m redevelopment of the Blists Hill Victorian Town, which was completed in 2009.
“Blists Hill was the largest single redevelopment Ironbridge has ever undertaken, and was a great experience personally and really important for the trust as a whole. It was intended to give us an extra 100,000 visitors a year and it has delivered on that as well as improving our ability to tell the story of the whole World Heritage Site.”
The next big redevelopment will be the Museum of Iron, which is housed in a Grade-II listed warehouse that was built at Coalbrookdale, a village in Ironbridge Gorge, in 1838. The building was used by the Coalbrookdale Company to assemble cast-iron products and was still in use in the 1970s.
“The Museum of Iron is perhaps the most iconic of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust’s 10 sites,” says Miller. “The building sits at the heart of the World Heritage Site and its redevelopment will allow us to tell a powerful story of how Coalbrookdale changed the world.”
Lots of the developments at Ironbridge have been designed to make it a more family friendly visitor attraction. But Miller is keen to emphasise that everything is backed up by an intellectual rigour.
“We could make Blists Hill a lot more commercial than it is and probably generate more income but we don’t want to, as ultimately that would kill what is good about it. The Victorian town has a very high level of curatorial underpinning,” he says.
Industrial heritage
Improving the interpretation of the museums and the site as a whole is part of Miller’s belief that industrial heritage can and should have a broad appeal.
“In the last 10 years we have gone very family friendly but, fundamentally, what it is to be Ironbridge is rooted in industrial heritage and we are very proud of that.
"We don’t want industrial heritage to be the preserve of a small dedicated group that like getting hands-on with steam engines – it is for everybody. The story of industrial heritage can be enjoyed by many different people in so many different ways and it is our job to make that easy for people.”
Miller is also concerned with the state of industrial heritage more broadly, and Ironbridge is currently trying to appoint an industrial heritage support officer.
This post is a partnership with the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), English Heritage and the Association for Industrial Archaeology. The aim is to support the 250-plus industrial heritage sites identified by English Heritage as being at risk.
Independent museums are important to Miller, particularly as his museum was one of the founders of AIM in 1977 when Neil Cossons was the head of Ironbridge Gorge.
The talent of his staff is another area that Miller constantly refers to and he is still in touch with his team at Norton Priory. He has recently added to his management at Ironbridge by appointing Matthew Thompson as its senior curator.
One of the other senior directors, Anna Brennand, deputy chief executive and director of finance and resources at Ironbridge, has further expanded the range of work that Miller has become involved in.
Brennand has led the commissioning of a contemporary artwork by Chicago-based Austrian artist Kurt Hentschläger. This takes the form of an enormous digital installation called Core, which was unveiled in May as part of the London 2012 Festival for the Cultural Olympiad.
Wide-ranging responsibilities
For Miller, the wide variety of work he gets involved in is one of the major appeals of being the chief executive, whether it’s supporting contemporary art or protecting scheduled ancient monuments.
“The joy of my job is how all the elements come into play,” he says. “I would say it is the blend of purity against pragmatism: the purity of following your educational charitable vision and the pragmatism of being commercially viable and competing against other tourist attractions and competing for leisure spend. That is the yin and the yang of what it is to be Ironbridge.”
Steve Miller has been the chief executive of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust since 2006 and prior to that he was the director of Norton Priory Museum Trust in Cheshire, which he joined in 2001.
Miller started his career in the sector working for Stockport Council in 1996 as a community heritage officer. He was later given responsibility for the management of four of the local authority’s museums.
He studied modern history at Oxford University and after a short period at management consultant and accountancy firm Deloitte he took an MA in heritage studies at Nottingham Trent University.
Miller represents Ironbridge on the Association of Independent Museums council and is a Museums Association mentor.
The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust was created in 1967 to preserve and interpret the remains of the industrial revolution in the six sq miles of the Ironbridge Gorge.
It is an independent educational charity and has about 160 staff (FTE) and more than 350 volunteers. It receives 570,000 visitors a year. It has an annual turnover of about £6m, excluding capital projects.
The trust manages 35 historic sites within the World Heritage Site of the Ironbridge Gorge, 10 of which are museums. As well as the museums, its responsibilities also include a research library, a tourist information centre, two youth hostels, archaeological sites, historic woodlands, housing, two chapels, and two Quaker burial grounds.
As well as the 10 museums, Ironbridge also has a research library, tourist information centre, two youth hostels, archaeological sites, historic woodlands, housing, two chapels and two Quaker burial grounds.
“The job is very varied and it’s a lot more varied than I anticipated when I came,” says Miller, who moved to Ironbridge from Cheshire’s Norton Priory Museum Trust in 2006. “It was a big step up in terms of size. Everything is 10 times bigger.”
But Miller says that what helped him cope with the increased scale was that he had been following a similar operational model at Norton Priory that combined income generation with community engagement.
“We are a national tourist attraction, a large independent museum, we are very entrepreneurial, but we are also deeply rooted in our communities.”
Miller says that outreach has been an important part of his work ever since he got his first job in the sector when he joined Stockport Council as a community heritage officer in 1996.
“I mean real community engagement, of a proper substantial kind, not just tokenism but making yourselves indispensable to your communities, making it feel like it is their site and their museum. That is really important to me.”
Community engagement
This is achieved at Ironbridge in a number of ways. Locals get a 40% discount on entry and volunteers are also important. There are about 70,000 school visits a year and the trust employs about 160 people, with many living nearby.
And the organisation has a variety of partnerships with local businesses and charities as well as two local councils.
“If we don’t feel properly rooted in our communities we are going to have problems in the future,” says Miller. “It is how we bring all those elements together that is the fundamental joy of the job.”
Miller had a number of priorities when he started at Ironbridge, including a desire by the trust’s board to deepen the organisation’s relationship with local communities. There was also a key capital project – the £12m redevelopment of the Blists Hill Victorian Town, which was completed in 2009.
“Blists Hill was the largest single redevelopment Ironbridge has ever undertaken, and was a great experience personally and really important for the trust as a whole. It was intended to give us an extra 100,000 visitors a year and it has delivered on that as well as improving our ability to tell the story of the whole World Heritage Site.”
The next big redevelopment will be the Museum of Iron, which is housed in a Grade-II listed warehouse that was built at Coalbrookdale, a village in Ironbridge Gorge, in 1838. The building was used by the Coalbrookdale Company to assemble cast-iron products and was still in use in the 1970s.
“The Museum of Iron is perhaps the most iconic of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust’s 10 sites,” says Miller. “The building sits at the heart of the World Heritage Site and its redevelopment will allow us to tell a powerful story of how Coalbrookdale changed the world.”
Lots of the developments at Ironbridge have been designed to make it a more family friendly visitor attraction. But Miller is keen to emphasise that everything is backed up by an intellectual rigour.
“We could make Blists Hill a lot more commercial than it is and probably generate more income but we don’t want to, as ultimately that would kill what is good about it. The Victorian town has a very high level of curatorial underpinning,” he says.
Industrial heritage
Improving the interpretation of the museums and the site as a whole is part of Miller’s belief that industrial heritage can and should have a broad appeal.
“In the last 10 years we have gone very family friendly but, fundamentally, what it is to be Ironbridge is rooted in industrial heritage and we are very proud of that.
"We don’t want industrial heritage to be the preserve of a small dedicated group that like getting hands-on with steam engines – it is for everybody. The story of industrial heritage can be enjoyed by many different people in so many different ways and it is our job to make that easy for people.”
Miller is also concerned with the state of industrial heritage more broadly, and Ironbridge is currently trying to appoint an industrial heritage support officer.
This post is a partnership with the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), English Heritage and the Association for Industrial Archaeology. The aim is to support the 250-plus industrial heritage sites identified by English Heritage as being at risk.
Independent museums are important to Miller, particularly as his museum was one of the founders of AIM in 1977 when Neil Cossons was the head of Ironbridge Gorge.
The talent of his staff is another area that Miller constantly refers to and he is still in touch with his team at Norton Priory. He has recently added to his management at Ironbridge by appointing Matthew Thompson as its senior curator.
One of the other senior directors, Anna Brennand, deputy chief executive and director of finance and resources at Ironbridge, has further expanded the range of work that Miller has become involved in.
Brennand has led the commissioning of a contemporary artwork by Chicago-based Austrian artist Kurt Hentschläger. This takes the form of an enormous digital installation called Core, which was unveiled in May as part of the London 2012 Festival for the Cultural Olympiad.
Wide-ranging responsibilities
For Miller, the wide variety of work he gets involved in is one of the major appeals of being the chief executive, whether it’s supporting contemporary art or protecting scheduled ancient monuments.
“The joy of my job is how all the elements come into play,” he says. “I would say it is the blend of purity against pragmatism: the purity of following your educational charitable vision and the pragmatism of being commercially viable and competing against other tourist attractions and competing for leisure spend. That is the yin and the yang of what it is to be Ironbridge.”
Steve Miller at a glance
Steve Miller has been the chief executive of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust since 2006 and prior to that he was the director of Norton Priory Museum Trust in Cheshire, which he joined in 2001.
Miller started his career in the sector working for Stockport Council in 1996 as a community heritage officer. He was later given responsibility for the management of four of the local authority’s museums.
He studied modern history at Oxford University and after a short period at management consultant and accountancy firm Deloitte he took an MA in heritage studies at Nottingham Trent University.
Miller represents Ironbridge on the Association of Independent Museums council and is a Museums Association mentor.
Ironbridge Gorge at a glance
The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust was created in 1967 to preserve and interpret the remains of the industrial revolution in the six sq miles of the Ironbridge Gorge.
It is an independent educational charity and has about 160 staff (FTE) and more than 350 volunteers. It receives 570,000 visitors a year. It has an annual turnover of about £6m, excluding capital projects.
The trust manages 35 historic sites within the World Heritage Site of the Ironbridge Gorge, 10 of which are museums. As well as the museums, its responsibilities also include a research library, a tourist information centre, two youth hostels, archaeological sites, historic woodlands, housing, two chapels, and two Quaker burial grounds.
