It takes a turn for the interesting

As you all may have seen or heard, Lancashire's County Councillors met today at County Hall in Preston and approved the funding proposals for the next financial year.

This means that our plea for one more year's funding to find a viable option has been ignored, for now. We will keep pushing the council to reconsider this decision and keep our mill museums for the extra year we have asked for, but I must admit it's not looking good.

However, I have been in touch with lots of amazing people who are all keen to keep the museums. Everyone from Councillors to the Museums Association, to arts consultants to other museums who have gone through similar struggles has offered help and advice.

I'm not sure where we go from here to be perfectly honest. However, I have ideas and am pretty sure that some of them could work.

What I do know is that whatever happens next, fundraising will be a major part of it. Start thinking of any local businesses of funders who might be interested and if you know them, tell them to get in touch.

This is not the end, it's just the beginning. We will #savethemills

Busy busy busy!

Good afternoon mill savers.

There's been a lot going on very visibly for campaign over the last 24 hours. Everyone has been amazing at sharing the Facebook page and the petition and showing that they care. It's incredibly important that we continue to raise awareness and that people care about these museums. I no one cares, we can't save them.

The petition has now reached 1,300 signatures which have come from Lancashire to London and Australia to India. It's amazing how many people from all different walks of life love our mills as much as we do. The message is KEEP SHARING AND SIGNING. Time is off the essence and we must get more time for the council to allow us to come up with another way of running these mills.

We've also now got Twitter and Instagram @SaveTheMills. CALL FOR HELP: send your fave Helmshore and Queen Street pics and a 140 character description to savethemills@outlook.com and we can post them from the main account.

Behind the scenes, we're getting somewhere. We have made contact with The Cromwell Museum in Cambridge, Birmingham Museums Trust and Derby Museums who have all been through similar cuts and restructures. It will be so great to get ideas from these inspirational museums as to how we can steer our campaign and what the alternatives to council funding are and how we set this up. Bear with us in this front, it's a bureaucratic minefield but we will get a plan together ASAP (then probably start asking you all for money- yeyyyy!) 

Other people I've spoken to are the lovely chairman of trustees of The Higher Mill Trust and Councillor Jennifer Mein, again some work being done on trying to come up with a long term plan. Very much lots of me badgering people but hopefully something to report on this soon.

More glamorously, our campaign will be ALL OVER local press next week. We spoke to 2BR and Roseendale Free Press this week so see and hear those next week. Very exciting!

On Saturday 28th November it is the HELMSHORE CHRISTMAS FAIR. We will have a stand and be collecting signatures. Come and say hello and come and see Helmshore (might be your last chance if this campaign goes tits up!)

One last point is that I am not an expert on this kind of thing and am not pretending to be. I have previously worked at Helmshore and still work in the museums industry, but I have never taken on a council or come up with a plan to run two museums without any confirmed funding. I need as much help as possible! Please do put local businesses, campaigners, charities and educational professionals in touch with me so we can come up with a plan that will actually work. 

Have a great mill saving day today lovely people