Primary school visitors at the John Gray CentreWell, we are now – at long last! – actually open! We had an excellent and truly enjoyable day on Friday, which kicked off with 90 (yes, 90!) children from King’s Meadow Primary School, St Mary’s Primary School, Ross High and Children 1st bursting in (in a calm and orderly manner, of course!) to explore the museum and see our first temporary exhibition, ‘Our Place in Time’ –which features their own work. Have a look at some of their handwritten comments on our Facebook page.
Message from one of our first visitors!We also had visitors from CHANGES community group and other schools in East Lothian, who had also contributed to the exhibition – and hopefully more will come over the school holidays, with their parents and friends. You can find out more about the projects they did, which are showcased in ‘Our Place in Time’, on our School and Community pages.
Later in the day we had a full-to-bursting Civic Reception, which led to even more visitors coming up to tour the exhibitions and explore the Archives and Local History Centre. They all seemed to enjoy it, which was great. Thank you to those who came to the ‘website workshops’ I’ve been doing around the county over the last few weeks, who came along too!
The week leading up to opening day was pretty amazing, as we rushed around putting the finishing touches to the museum exhibition, setting up ‘Our Place in Time’, finalising the shelving and books in the Local History Centre, learning how to set and unset the alarm, establishing ‘procedures’ and generally getting ready. It was a week of long days, but so exciting to see the museum grow from a silent shell, littered with hammers, screwdrivers, unopened boxes of precious artefacts, and mysterious widgets and plastic frames into the modern, beautiful, fascinating and informative gallery it is now (even if I do say so – it wasn’t me who did it, it was the main museum team!) Have a look at our video on YouTube to see Claire Pannell, our Collections Officer, explaining the start of the process.
We’ll soon have a new video showing the highlights from Opening Day on our YouTube channel, so keep an eye open for it.
Now we need to get the word out to make sure everyone realises we’re fully open to the public – seven days a week! Check out our opening hours. Don’t forget we also have free wi-fi in the Centre (you just need your East Lothian library card and pin to log in), as well as bookable computers in the computer room and the library. Help us spread the word!