A great day was had by all on Sunday 12th March 2023, visiting Lima Sector Ops room at RAF Rigby.

The museum may be closed but our team of volunteers have been busy today doing lots of different jobs around the site.
​The Dakota Team continue to sort out the hangar to make working on the aircraft easier. The recently laid concrete floor has now been painted, primarily to keep dust levels down but this has had the added bonus of making it more aesthetically pleasing too!
Our maintenance team was busy in the kitchen store painting the floor and walls in preparation for new racking.
Our collections team was busy in the museum room putting away the display items for the Winter and worked continued in the archive to index and record more collection items.
This is a typical Saturday in the off season when lots and lots of work is done behind the scenes and today was a great example of the variety of jobs our dedicated volunteers undertake.

​Behind the Scenes MAVC Winter 2021 Volunteer’s Blog
 
Saturday 6th November 2021
 
Twenty nine volunteers gathered to celebrate the teams' achievements at the end of the short open season at Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre. The meeting started with cake, tea and coffee; a super spread food thanks to Chris and Beryl.
 
A fun ‘awards’ ceremony followed with everyone also being thanked for their commitment and dedication to the work done both onsite, welcoming visitors, as well as behind the scenes. As we were all in one place and face to face, the trustees wanted to gather feedback from everyone and we all shared our ideas for tweaking things for the visitor centre, visitors and volunteers as well as sharing some ‘big’ ideas for not just the next season but the next 10 years.
 
With so many new volunteers in one place, something that COVID19 has restricted, we finished the day with compiling a shared set of Values that we could all agree were ‘What we are’ and ‘What we do’ and ‘How we would do it’. After a passionate debate we whittled 120 suggestions down to a set of 5 values that we feel are at the heart of everything we do so going forward these will be our guiding principles. We'll endeavour to be.......
 

• Welcoming
• Educational
• Respectful
• Enthusiastic
• Inspirational

 
It was a great day which set the scene for the closed season’s behind the scenes activities and one which will help us develop our plans for the longer term.

​Due to Lockdown#2 it is with great sadness that we have to announce that our onsite volunteer sessions on Wednesdays and Saturdays are suspended with immediate effect. We'd like to say a big "thank you" to everyone who has joined us onsite over the last few months; we have achieved so much. Thanks to all the volunteer’s hard work and commitment the centre buildings have been refreshed and displays have been revamped. Furthermore, digitisation and cataloguing activities for the archives have also progressed well.

We all hope that Lockdown #2 is as short  as possible and we look forward to welcoming all our volunteers back on site as soon as possible.

The museum may be closed, but work continues behind the scenes to manage our collection and explore new and innovative ways of providing public "access" during lockdown. Like many organisations, video conferencing technology has become central to our day to day operations. Meetings that would previously have been face to face have now been moved online.

With social distancing still in place due to the coronavirus outbreak, our Curator and Collections Manager took part in a recent Museum Development East Midlands (MDEM) workshop via Zoom. The workshop entitled “Delving Deeper: Reinterpreting Collections” covered, amongst other things, ways of making collections available to the public during lockdown whilst museums are closed.  We all shared our ideas and learned new ones to help us manage our collections and explore new ways to share them with our audiences during these crazy times. Thanks to all those who attended for their great ideas.
 
You can follow all of the workshop participants via their Twitter pages:
 
Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre @RafMetheringham
Verity : @verity_smith89,
Sarah MDEM @MusDevEM,
The Old Rectory Loughborough @OldRectoryLboro
The Cottage Museum Woodall Spa @CottageMuseumWS,
Louth Museum @LouthMuseum
Desborough Hertitage Centre @DesboroughHeri1
Swannington Heritage Trust @HoughMill
Belper North Mill @belpermill