Welcome to the 24 Hour Museum news in brief page for the week ending March 16 2008.

14.03.2008 - New Arts Council boss makes his first speech at local government conference

Alan Davey, the new Chief Executive of Arts Council England, made his first keynote speech at the annual Local Government Association of Culture, Tourism and Sport Conference.

The speech at the Arena and Convention Centre in Liverpool on March 13 highlighted the importance of local government in the funding and delivery of the arts in England and encouraged engagement in quality arts as a shared aim of the Arts Council and local government.

Mr Davey highlighted examples that demonstrate the importance of the Arts Council’s relationship with local authorities including the refurbishment of the Bluecoat – the oldest visual arts centre in Liverpool, and Manchester International Festival, for which the Arts Council has just announced an additional investment of one million pounds.

“The Arts Council is about getting great art to more people," said Mr Davey, "an endeavour that local authorities across the country share with us. I look forward to working with the LGA and all partners in local government to build on our successes to date, and to further strengthen a partnership based on trust and respect.”

14.03.2008 - Science Museum scoops US award for online game

The Science Museum's Launchball, a game produced alongside the reopening of the museum's Launchpad gallery, has won both the 'Games' and the overall 'Best in Show' web awards at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

Described by the judges as "an online destination that helps make your life a lot more fun," the game boasts various levels of brain twisting puzzles and has attracted over 1.5 million page views in less than six months.

For more educational games produced by UK museums and galleries see the 24 Hour Museum children's zone www.show.me.uk.

13.03.2008 – Guinea Pig Club for veterans closes its doors

A pub that has its origins in a club for injured servicemen treated at a groundbreaking burns unit has been earmarked for demolition.

The Guinea Pig Club in East Grinstead, East Sussex, was a pub for some years, after having been set up as a club by RAF pilots injured during the Second World War. They named it in reference to the often experimental burns treatment they underwent at the town’s Queen Victoria Hospital, under Sir Archibald McIndoe.

After the pub closed in 2005, former members of the club tried in vain to get the 1950s building listed. Many of them visited it once a year for the annual reunion, though club numbers have dwindled from nearly 650 to 97 worldwide.

A Guinea Pig Museum will open at the Queen Victoria Hospital later in 2008, featuring the pub sign and other artefacts, while the club’s site will probably be developed into flats.

13.03.2008 – Literary archive at Exeter University to be catalogued

Original manuscripts, letters and poems by authors from the South West including Ted Hughes, Daphne Du Maurier and Charles Causley will be easier to access thanks to a new grant awarded to the University of Exeter.

The literary archive – part of the university’s Special Collections - is to be catalogued with help from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Pilgrim Trust.

The project, entitled ‘Writing Lives – archives of literary craft and kinship’, covers documents from eight novelists, including a major new acquisition of papers from the Devon poet and critic Patricia Beer. The archive will not only inform research projects, but inspire new creative writing.

“Archives are, by their very nature, fragmentary,” said Dr Jessica Gardner, head of Special Collections. “For a scholar, this can be hugely frustrating, but the creative writer sees a different opportunity; namely the chance to write a whole new dramatic story where the historical evidence ends.”

Novelist Justine Picardie, for example, used letters in the archive to inspire her novel Daphne, based on Du Maurier’s interest in Branwell Bronte.

13.03.2008 – HLF Awards £250,000 for projects in Eastbourne and Hastings

The Heritage Lottery Fund has just announced awards totalling £250,000 for two projects in East Sussex.

The LINK Centre for Deafened People based in Eastbourne has been awarded £168,500 to kick-start their ‘Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow’ project.

Working in partnership with the Oral History Society over the course of two years, LINK will train volunteers to collect and record the experiences and memories of other deafened people and share these histories with as many people as possible. The recordings will be made available in the British Library’s Sound Archive to share the impact that hearing loss has on people and the isolation they can feel.

The second award, of £156,500, was granted to the Stade Heritage Education Project in Hastings.

The area is fondly known for its chic Victorian shops and hosts the UK’s steepest railway which carries visitors up to the scenic Hastings Country Park. However, many people know little about the town’s historical roots.

Thanks to the lottery boost, six people will now be able to be trained up as volunteers and heritage guides in the area known as the Stade, to promote the cultural heritage on their doorstep. Other partners in the project include the Shipwreck and Coastal Heritage Centre, the Fisherman’s Museum and the Hastings Fisherman’s Protection Society.

13.03.2008 – Science Museum reunites BBC Micro team

The team that created the BBC Micro computer in the early 1980s will be brought together again at London’s Science Museum on March 20. It will be the first time they have all been together in over 20 years.

The BBC Micro, launched in 1982 and axed in 1986, was a huge success and became a familiar sight in schools. John Radcliffe and David Allen, from the BBC, and Hermann Hauser and Andy Hopper, from Acorn Computers, were key players in the project, but subsequently went their separate ways.

The four men will discuss the project and its legacy at a special meeting of the Computer Conservation Society at 2.30pm on Thursday March 20 at the Science Museum. On show will be a BBC Model B, a gold-plated BBC Micro, and Acorn Atom, Archimedes and Electron and a BBC Domesday System.

13.03.2008 – Wales gets its first pop music archive

Bangor University is to establish the first archive of Welsh language pop music, to preserve this aspect of the country’s culture for the future.

The archive will collect, store and catalogue everything from fanzines to original song lyrics and vinyl records going back to the 1940s, though Welsh language pop really took off in the 1960s. The collection will also be digitised.

The university’s School of Music and Archive is now inviting people who own items that might be suitable for the archive to come forward and donate them.

13.03.2008 – Bexhill resident bequeaths £40,000 to town’s museums

An artist from Bexhill has left £40,000 to the town’s museums in her will.

Edna North, who died aged 99 at the end of 2007, was a former volunteer at Bexhill Museum of Costume and Social history. Her gift will be acknowledged in the new Bexhill Museum.

12.03.2008 - Roald Dahl Museum up for 'tourism oscar'

The Roald Dahl Museum has been short-listed for the prestigious national Enjoy England Awards for Excellence 2008, known as the tourism ‘Oscars’, after winning the regional Tourism South East Best Small Visitor Attraction last year.

It is one of only three attractions (along with Rockingham Castle in Leicestershire and Forde Abbey in Somerset) being considered for the accolade of top Small Visitor Attraction in England.

Organised by VisitBritain, the annual awards recognise the best of the UK's tourist destinations and will be announced at a national awards ceremony in St Georges Hall, Liverpool, on 23 April 2008.

12.03.2008 - Old photographs sought for Rotherham Heritage Initiative

As part ot the £3.5m Townscape Heritage Initiative, launched in January 2008, Rotherham Council is asking people to share their old photographs and memories of the high street.

The photographs and memories will feed into a heritage scheme that aims to restore the high street by providing grants to make improvements to shops. The memories will be used to help bring the heritage of the high street back to life.

11.03.2008 - MOSI's Body Worlds exhibition supports No Smoking Day

Gunther von Hagens’ BODY WORLDS 4 is joining forces with the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) and the Association of European Cancer Leagues (ECL) to support No Smoking Day on Wednesday March 12 2008.

The ECL has mounted a special presentation at BODY WORLDS 4, which is currently showing at Manchester-based MOSI, called ‘The Power of Communications Against Tobacco’.

It features information about the effectiveness of pictorial health warnings on tobacco products.

"ECL is proud to be the cancer prevention partner for BODY WORLDS 4," said ECL President Cora Honing. "Visitors will have the possibility to see what damage cancer can do to our bodies and to learn how they can prevent it.”

Other dramatic illustrations of the dangers of smoking in Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS 4 are blackened and cancer-ridden smokers' lungs.

The striking comparison with the adjacent healthy lungs of a non-smoker has moved visitors at other BODY WORLDS exhibitions to discard their unfinished cigarette packs on the glass display cases containing the smoker’s lung and vow to quit smoking.

11.03.2008 - Suffolk Local History Councils announce Societies’ Day 2008

The Suffolk Local History Council (SLHC) is holding a free fair featuring its member societies at the Mendlesham Community Centre from 2pm to 4:30pm on Saturday March 15.

Around 30 of Suffolk’s major local history groups, societies, and museums will be participating in the biannual event with their own special stands and displays.

10.03.2008 - National Trust celebrates 60 years of ownership at Peckover House

To celebrate opening the doors of Peckover House to visitors for 60 years, the National Trust will be marking the occasion with a number of special events and an anniversary exhibition.

2008 is the diamond anniversary of the National Trust’s ownership of the Georgian Quaker House, which dates to the 18th century. A special anniversary exhibition of historic photographs will open the new season at the house on Saturday March 15 showing the house and the Peckover family, as well as life in Wisbech, in and around 1948.

The photographs have been sourced from the studio of professional Wisbech photographer, Lilian Ream.

Peckover House stands at the heart of North Brink in Wisbech, part of one of the great streetscapes of Georgian England, a handsome testament to the prosperity of the town in the 18th century.

To find out more about other events taking place at the property this year, visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/peckover.

10.03.2008 - Prehistoric carved stone returns home to Westray

The Westray Stone, a prehistoric carved stone, is to be returned to the island of Westray after 25 years at Orkney Museum.

Found during quarrying work in 1981, the stone is believed to have once been an integral part of chambered cairn dating from the Neolithic period and is a fine example of prehistoric spiral carving.

10.03.2008 - Spinster leaves £2m to Edinburgh museum

An elderly spinster has left National Museums of Scotland the largest bequest in the institution's 147-year history.

Adele Stewart, who died aged 79 in 2006, has left the Edinburgh museum £2m in her will, which will be used to help fund an ongoing multi-million pound redevelopment scheme.

Well known to museum staff, Adele visited Scotland's national museum regularly, donating several items and even becoming an official patron. A new gallery is to be named in her honour when the redevelopment work is completed in 2011.

10.03.2008 - Suspected arson strike at Bowes Railway Museum

Arsonists are being blamed for a blaze at the Bowes Railway Museum over the weekend that destroyed valuable pieces of rolling stock worth in excess of £100,000.

The museum at Washington in Gateshead is the world's only operationally preserved standard gauge, rope-hauled railway and staff are now facing up to the loss of wagons that are irreplaceable.

Operations manager John Young told the Shields Gazette: "It's not just the cost of the damage – it's the fact that the wagons are irreplaceable. These people are just systematically destroying the history of the north east."

Anyone with information is asked to call the police on (08456) 043 043 ext 66447.