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Friends of Orkney Boat Museum

Friends of Orkney Boat Museum aim to;

Raise the profile of the museum and keep it high.

Recruit more Friends, so as to increase the feeling of ownership by the community and beyond.

Raise money and donate it to the parent body as appropriate to assist the company with achieving its aims.

 

Download the Friends of Orkney Boat Museum membership form
(Adobe Acrobat PDF format)

Friends News

The 2006 Summer Season
The Friends had stalls at the Shapinsay Sea Festival in July and at the Dounby and County Show in August, flying the flag and raising funds. The Friends’ new tent withstood the winds at Dounby thanks in part to our industrial-sized tent pegs and the volunteers helped other stall-holders to rescue their tents. Smug? Who us?

A Busy November
We started a busy November with the Charities Christmas Bazaar. This was our first time at this event but it was such a success that we immediately booked our place for the 2007 bazaar. We then had the lecture on exploring Canada by John Rae (alright, an actor pretending to be John Rae). This was very successful and we had the Supper Room of the Kirkwall Town Hall packed out. The room was ‘done up’ as a Victorian lecture hall and the committee were ‘done up’ in Victorian costume. A measure of the success was that a number of people asked if we could do it again. We might well do so at some point. Finally, as a break from all this, some of the committee had a day trip to Lyness to see many of the boats which are to be housed in the museum.

Orkney Homecoming 2007
About 50 Canadians came to Orkney in May to make contact with relatives and to trace their Orcadian ancestors. The Friends’ Chairman and Secretary took them to the sites associated with John Rae: the cathedral. The Hall of Clestrain and the Stromness Museum. We also took them to the Orphir Community Centre where they met Orphir folk who helped them to trace relatives and ancestors.

We Bought a Boat!
The Friends helped the Orkney Islands Council to secure the Otterbank, the bank boat which used to serve the North Isles. She will be housed at the Scapa Flow Visitors Centre at Lyness until the Boat Museum is completed. Come and see her at Lyness this summer.

Events Coming Up
With the good weather coming on, we have some events scheduled:
· July: a visit by the replica Viking longship Sea Stallion of Glendalough on its way from the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde in Denmark to Dublin. At 100 feet long, this is one of the biggest such ships afloat.
· August: the agricultural shows
· September: a visit by the sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl.
If anyone wants to help with any of these events, contact the Friends’ secretary, Jack Drever.

April 2006
Anna Elmy will chair the Friends of the Orkney Boat Museum for 2006.

She was elected at the annual general meeting of the Friends in Kirkwall. The outgoing chair, Mick Bain, will stay on as vice chair.

Other committee members elected were: secretary, Jack Drever, treasurer, Christopher Macrae, and Andrew Appleby, George Burgher, Tanya Craigie, Iris Heddle, Ian Macleod and Willie Tulloch. The Friends also presented a cheque for £16,000 to the boat museum company.

A Message from Mick Bain, Vice Chairman
Somewhat unique at present, Friends of Orkney Boat Museum are a group of friends but as yet we do not have a museum. Helping to rectify this anomaly is, for the present, our main aim.

We were founded in rather a rush, the constraints imposed by the inclusion of the Hall of Clestrain in the BBC Restoration Programme, not least the initial commercial confidentiality, meant that a friends organisation could not be made public until the programme itself was fairly imminent. As a result a public meeting to form the friends was held less than a month before filming was due to take place at the Hall and the new committee were expected to organise a public open day to coincide with that filming.

Needless to say, a committee was elected from the floor of that public meeting, the open day was arranged (complete with pipe band and traditional music) and the results were seen on the television. In the current idiom "We had to hit the ground running", and thanks to a lot of hard work by a lot of people, we did.

The hectic pace continued through the summer. Behind the scenes the committee worked on a constitution and the various other background tasks required to set up a Friends organisation whilst continuing to arrange public functions including a further open day, a stand at the Dounby Agricultural Show and various raffles and competitions. Again our thanks are due to many hard working people.

Thankfully the pace of events has now eased and we are able to plan for the long haul. Not being successful in Restoration was a disappointment but we always knew we faced tough competition and that the foundation of a boat museum was going to be hard even had we won. We now have a longer task but we are confident that a project as good as this is worth the effort. Major fund raising from government and other formal funding bodies will be the task of the Board of Orkney Boat Museum, but the Friends, and there are now some 400 of us, will play a valuable part in the overall task. We have agreed a target for ourselves of £250,000 to be raised over the life of the project to found the museum; thereafter we will become a more standard friends organisation assisting with day to day fund raising and providing volunteers for the myriad tasks that will be required from day to day.

Friends of Orkney Boat Museum Recognised as Scottish Charity

The Friends of Orkney Boat Museum is a recognised Scottish Charity, No. SC036660. We heartily encourage all donors who are UK taxpayers to use the new Gift Aid form which can be found on the membership application. This will increase the value of any donation you may make in future by 28%, at no further cost to yourselves.

Friends Committee

The Officers of the current committee are:

Chair - Anna Elmy
Contact. tel. 01856 761 889 email. aelmy@btinternet.com

Vice Chair - Mick Bain
Contact. tel. 01856 851 339 email. j.bain@btinternet.com

Secretary - Jack Drever
tel. 01856 771 889 email. jdreverboat@aol.com

Treasurer - Christopher Macrae

Patrons of the Project

Cameron Stout - winner of Big Brother 2003
Mr George Marwick - Lord Lieutenant

See also:

Read the Friends of Orkney Boat Museum Newsletter
Directors of Orkney Boat Museum Ltd.

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Orkney Boat Museum is a company limited by guarantee, Co. Reg. No. SC273109, and is a recognised Scottish charity

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