Happy Christmas from the Museum and Archives team!

It’s been a busy year for Brent Museum and Brent Archives, full of exciting events, intriguing discoveries, and visitors from around the world.

We started the year playing host to an exhibition from the British Museum, Fabric of a Nation, which celebrated 50 years of Ghanaian independence in a colourful display of wax-printed fabrics and the stories they tell, alongside a wonderful fabric artwork made especially for the exhibition by a group of Brent’s African residents. In the Community Gallery, an exhibition on the Welsh Harp reservoir was replaced in April by one looking at the history of the Willesden Hospital, in celebration of the centenary this year of John Passmore Edwards, the Victorian philanthropist who funded the construction of the hospital. We have been delighted recently to display as part of the exhibition artwork produced by a group working with the Arts in Health team who use the building today.

Following the end of Fabric of a Nation, May saw the opening of Communicating Through Cats: The Art and Mind of Louis Wain, an exhibition looking at the life and work of one of the local area’s most successful artists. Visitors from as far afield as Australia came to enjoy the wonderful artwork on loan from Chris Beetles Gallery and Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum and Archives, and find out more about Wain’s work and the personal tragedies that influenced it – and regular blog readers will have read some of the wonderful captions and comments left by exhibition visitors.

The Museum and Archives also celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain this summer, alongside museums across London and the Southbank Centre. The Indoor Street Party we held in August avoided the risk of being rained off, as many of the original Festival street parties were, and was a highlight of the summer for many local families and residents, who came to find out more about the area’s post-war history, 1950s life and the Festival of Britain, and enjoyed cake and sandwiches, a stilt-walking juggler, and wonderful dancing from Brent’s ENCEE Academy. Museum staff were also delighted to accompany the dancers from ENCEE when they held a workshop at the Southbank Centre as part of the Festival 51 weekend of activities.

Brent Archives has this year helped people from around the globe with their research into the history of the local area, and has added new collections to the online catalogues throughout the year, making them more accesible to you. During cataloguing work, we found out more about a mortgage we hold on a local property, bought in the 1880s by Friedrich Engels, and enhanced catalogues have helped us produce some great new learning resources for schools and education sessions.

After saying goodbye to Emma Tutton, who we will continue to work closely with in her new role as Senior Arts Officer for Brent Council, last week we welcomed the new Learning Officer, Sorcha Ni Foghluda. Sorcha is looking forward to the exciting opportunities coming up in 2012 to introduce more people to the Museum and Archives collections and the local history of the borough.

Finally, following the award of a grant earlier this month, Brent Archives is looking forward to a project to conserve one of our oldest collections, The North Collection, which will be starting in the new year. So, after a busy year, the team are looking forward to a couple of days off over the Christmas break, before we get our teeth into new and exciting projects in 2012!

Brent Museum and Brent Archives will be closed on the bank holidays over the festive period, but we will be open between Christmas and the New Year for those of you taking the opportunity of your own time off to look into your local or family history in the Archives, or bringing the family to visit the Museum. You can see our Christmas opening hours here.

We’d like to take the opportunity to wish all our users and blog readers all the very best for the festive season, whatever you’re doing, and we look forward to keeping you updated, and seeing lots of you, in 2012!

Posted by Kate