RAMM excels despite difficult year during global pandemic
Published: 11 November 2021
The important role that Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) and Art Gallery plays in the creative and cultural life of the city and region has been highlighted in a new document.
RAMM’s Annual Review 2020-21 highlights the difficult year the museum had impacted by the pandemic but also how staff improvised to bring the museum to people’s homes through online learning.
RAMM was significantly impacted by the pandemic and was only able to open its doors for just 32 days between April 2020 and March 2021. Yet RAMM continued to achieve and progress thanks to its loyal supporters and resilient staff.
Cllr Amal Ghusain, Lead Councillor for Communities and Culture at Exeter City Council, said: “This has been without doubt one of the most challenging years in the museum’s 153-year history and certainly in the lives of many of us. I am immensely proud of what the RAMM team has achieved in the face of what at times has seemed like a chaotic and uncertain world.”
Highlights of the year include inspiring creativity and helping people to get creative from their own homes during lockdown.
Throughout the pandemic the museum continued to share weekly challenges with its RAMM at Home programme.
It also continued to create new opportunities for local and regional artists and find new ways to connect its local and wider communities. The museum’s digital resources helped us to share RAMM’s work with more people than ever before.
Lockdown Legends honoured local heroes in an online exhibition and the best of the City Council’s Wildlife at Home Photography competition were also spotlighted in a digital showcase.
The museum continued to develop and care for RAMM’s collections of over 1 million objects and acquiring an important watercolour by Thomas Girtin.
RAMM is ranked Number one by Trip Advisor for things to do in Exeter and rated four and a half stars.
RAMM is thankful to all those who supported the museum through a difficult year as its accomplishments would not have been possible without that support.
Cllr Ghusain is confident that the museum will continue to thrive. She said: “The future is not going to be easy as RAMM, like many other cultural organisations, faces financial challenges and continues to operate under restrictive restrictions to mitigate the risk of Covid. However RAMM is well placed to come out of this stronger than ever, rooted as it is in the community is serves.
“The breadth and ambition of RAMM’s work give it an instrumental role in the creative and cultural life of the city and region. This is never more important than now as we transition through to a rather uncertain future,” she added.
To read the full Annual Review 2020-21 visit the RAMM website at https://rammuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Annual-Review-2020-21-Digital-Pages-Final.pdf