Planning: The best (in fact the only one so far) guidance on reopening your museum has been drawn up by the Go Industrial independent museums group and can be found here https://www.goindustrial.co.uk/our-blog/blog-post/guidance-for-reopening-your-museum. There are templates for a checklist of actions and risk assessment and it is excellent.
There is already Scottish government guidance for the tourism industry which is also useful https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-tourism-and-hospitality-sector-guidance/
Funding for the practical steps you will need to take – from sanitiser stations to signage to screens to contactless payments – is offered from two sources:
Museums Galleries Scotland: Covid-19 Adaptation Fund https://www.museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk/funding/covid-19-adaptation-fund/. This is open to ALL museums in Scotland, including non-accredited.
The Heritage Fund: https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/funding/heritage-emergency-fund/3-50k who are also including new business plans within the grant stream. We are assuming they are sticking to the rule that you must have previously had a grant of over £10k from them. This is a shame!
Getting equipment and tools for reopening
We are hearing that social distancing screens etc are sold out at a lot of companies and that there is a world shortage of perspex, so I have checked out some likely sources.
This is a list of companies which DO have stock at the moment, or always make them to order so if you can handle a lead time you will be ok.
have perspex in stock and a full catalogue. They are based in Glasgow and are supplying complete packages to lots of places preparing to open.
https://www.workwellmats.co.uk have stock of screens and workstation dividers, check out their social distancing section.
https://www.accessdisplays.co.uk make everything to order and so can do bespoke screens if you need odd sizes. Some longer lead times (up to 6 weeks) but not necessarily – often quite short.
https://asgservices.co.uk/social-distancing-products/ have a lead in time of 3 weeks for perspex screens but do other sorts – solid and decorative screens which are much quicker.
I am waiting to hear back from two potential sources which are good to know about anyway as they do really good, cheap exhibition/display materials:
Finally this company only does signs and stickers but they have a big range of some really nice ones: https://www.signbox.co.uk/resource/product-knowledge/social-distancing-stickers/
That’s all – just some practical stuff so you can get moving. More as we have it.
Catherine
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