In brief

Arts Council England (ACE) has teamed up with Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales, Museums Galleries Scotland and the Northern Ireland Museums Council to launch the revised Accreditation scheme. The scheme focuses on collections development and encouraging visitor interaction with collections. It is open for  applications, with details on ACE’s website.


The Public Catalogue Foundation has uploaded more than half the national collection of oil paintings online. There are now more than 104,000 paintings on the Your Paintings website (pictured is Rubens’ Portrait of Marchesa Maria Serra Pallavicino), which has had an average of 125,000 unique monthly users since its launch in June. More than 5,000 members of the public have signed up as taggers to help catalogue the collection.


The Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro has won the University of Exeter’s Social and Cultural Impact award for its Revealing Collections exhibition and Talking Sex, its sex education resource that is being trialled in 40 south-west schools. As part of the project, young people used museum objects to inspire their artistic creations on the subject of sex.


The boards of All About Audiences in the northwest, Audiences South West and Audiences London have approved plans for a single national audience development agency. Provisionally called Audiences Plus, it will comprise northern and southern hubs, with a network of regional advisers.