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.