“Friends of the Year 2025” Award

The Friends of Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery are joint winners of the 2025 BAFM “Friends of the Year” Award

The award is sponsored by the Marsh Charitable Trust in partnership with the British Association of Friends of Museums. The Marsh Trust specialises in providing small annual grants to charities across a wide range of  activities and runs the Marsh Awards, which are intended to reward the work of volunteers and charity workers in the areas of conservation, science, the arts, heritage, literature, social welfare and volunteering. This year the award was made jointly to Blackburn Museum Friends and The Friends of The Fordingbridge Museum.  (Click here for the award page on the March Trust website)

Blackburn Museum Friends help to promote and support the museum through fundraising, conservation, and the restoration of paintings and other exhibits. They also aim to raise awareness of the museum and contribute to activities that increase public engagement with its collections and it is the latter activity that has been recognised by this award. Over the past year, the Friends have connected with hundreds of visitors through tours and lectures. They publish a newsletter, contribute to the museum’s blog and enhance visitor engagement by providing talks and tours focused on the collections. One volunteer spends a day a week offering visitors information about the pictures in the Art Gallery. These activities materially improve the museum’s capacity to engage visitors. The  presence in the gallery and guided tours have helped to attract new audiences, including the Community Harmony support group for refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants, who enjoyed a successful museum tour, followed by a town tour,

The Friends newsletter TELA was runner up in the “Newsletter of the Year ” award. (Click Here)