The Museum of Carpet has launched an appeal to raise £20,000 in the face of soaring energy bills and lower visitor numbers.
The museum, in Kidderminster, celebrated its 10th anniversary last month and is developing an action plan for the future.
‘The continuation of starts and stops with the Covid-19 pandemic and despite support from national and local government, crowd-funding and donations we survived the first lockdown and were in a good situation. However, many of our volunteers were classed as vulnerable people and we had to bring in staff to fill those places. Over the last two years people have been nervous to come out into closed environments. School visits have picked up but group visits have also fallen,’ says Vicky Bagnall, Museum of Carpet chairman of trustees.
‘We are £20,000-a-year short to pay these extra staff and earlier this year our gas bill went from £4,000 to £16,000-a-year. We are grateful for government support but other costs have also risen. There is the expectation of another fall-off in visitor numbers as the cost of living increases and starts to impact.
‘We do have two trump cards with our tenants, Forte Cloth and the National Carpet Cleaning Association, who share our passion for carpets and design. We hope the Cleaning Association will bring their members to become our members, linking to show the future of carpets and design.’
Bagnall says the museum is looking to license designs from its archive but that would take at least a year before that generated any income.
