Lowewood Museum is now under the management of the Lowewood Museum Trust; a new charitable incorporated organisation. In this series of posts, meet the members of the Trust Board, with this article featuring Steve Whitlam.

Steve Whitlam lives in North East London with his wife and two children but has worked in the borough of Broxbourne since 2005. He is Broxbourne Borough Council’s Community Development Manager. Steve and his team are responsible for youth work, children’s playschemes and holiday hunger initiatives, sports development, the Active Herts health programme, support to vulnerable people, environmental sustainability, liaison with the community / voluntary sector, child safeguarding and culture and heritage.

Prior to joining Broxbourne Council, Steve worked in the Department of Health as a knowledge manager within the NHS Modernisation Agency.

Outside of work, Steve is a keen follower of Norwich City Football Club and has run the Flown From The Nest website for almost 25 years which is devoted to the careers of former players. This has led to Steve writing a column in the official Norwich City matchday programme for each home game for the last 13 seasons as well as contributions to newspaper articles and other publications.

Steve is also a trustee of All Saints Highams Park where he and his wife have been part of the leadership team for almost ten years. Other interests include British police procedural novels, real ale and trying to find the time to go running.

He says “I am excited for the future of the museum building upon the good foundations established before but re-imagining the service to engage with a wider range of residents and visitors by taking advantage of the many new opportunities as they present themselves.”

Lowewood Museum is now under the management of the Lowewood Museum Trust; a new charitable incorporated organisation. In this series of posts, meet the members of the Trust Board, with this article featuring Pete Dockar.

Pete Dockar lives in Broxbourne with his wife and two young children, having moved from London 10 years ago to be closer to his wife’s family who have lived in the area for many years.

He is responsible for customer and digital banking propositions at Virgin Money UK and is a director of a number of the bank’s subsidiaries.  He was previously at HSBC, holding senior UK and European positions including UK Head of Mortgages.

Pete has a keen interest in Broxbourne’s rich history and local architecture. He is hugely excited about the opportunity for the museum to be a hub that by connecting people to their heritage, strengthens communities and deepens family ties. 

In his spare time, in addition to history he also enjoys running as well as composing and performing music.

Lowewood Museum is now under the management of the Lowewood Museum Trust; a new charitable incorporated organisation. In this series of posts, meet the members of the Trust Board, with this article featuring Claire Haggarty.

Claire Haggarty is a qualified primary school teacher and volunteer manager from Bedfordshire. “I began working in museums as soon as I graduated from university taking on various seasonal visitor services roles and freelancing as a museum educator. I had great fun working in museum education using costume and theatre to bring history to life. It offered balance to the sometimes stressful duty management of busy visitor attractions dealing with anything from ticketing problems, or visitor complaints right through to first aid calls and broken-down cars in the visitor car park.”

Claire received a Highly Commended at the 2016 Volunteer’s in Museums Awards for Supporting, Managing and Encouraging Others in her work recruiting and training volunteers on the Painted Hall Project at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. The project which received £7.7million from the Heritage Lottery Fund was a unique opportunity for visitors to see the conservation of 40,000 sq feet of fresco ceiling up-close, and volunteers were recruited to lead visitor tours on the 60-foot internal scaffolding.

Since then, Claire has gone on to work for organisations like Age UK and Bletchley Park as a Volunteer Manager advising on policy development and people strategy. She actively volunteers as a part of her hometown’s good neighbour scheme and as a steering committee member of the Heritage Volunteering Group, a group of heritage professionals who come together to promote best practice in volunteer management across the heritage sector through training and events.

A keen quilter and chef, Claire can otherwise be found in the garden or on her allotment.