Reawakening and Reshaping our Community’s Collection

What is Uncovering Letchworth?

Uncovering Letchworth is a 21-month project led by Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation’s Museum Services Team, who are working to collaboratively explore The Garden City Collection with new audiences.

The project aims to enrich The Garden City Collection by discovering unrepresented local stories, celebrating them via a series of co-created engagement projects, community-led exhibitions and special events.

Throughout the project, the team will work within the community to assemble a strong network of diverse partners, growing audiences, participants and advocates for the future.

Alongside providing vital care for The Collection, the project aims to improve The Collection’s resilience as a service, providing a valued, relevant, and accessible resource for our community.

What is The Garden City Collection?

The Garden City Collection is an ACE accredited museum service, located in Letchworth Garden City. It cares for 250,000 objects in a purpose-converted facility and shares those objects both online (through a website and social media), and physically (at the collection& study centre itself and at our micro museum, The Museum at One Garden City).

Our museum service is part of a wider organisation, Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation (LGCHF). The LGCHF has its origins in First Garden City Ltd, the company which was founded in 1903 to manage and develop the world’s first garden city at Letchworth, investing – as we do to this day – the income from owning a property portfolio in the town into local community benefit.

What does the project involve?

Uncovering Letchworth is comprised of the following strands:

Collections Review

The Collections Officers have conducted a comprehensive review of the collections and archives held by the Garden City Collection. During this formal audit of the museum’s holdings, the team has worked to identify any gaps in how well the collections represent the town’s demographics.

As part of the review, the Collections Officers will work with the Heritage Foundation’s Research and Evaluation Manager to analyse demographic data relating to the town to provide a benchmark against which to compare.

Young Curators

Junior Curators

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