Curator's pride in 'groundbreaking' museums

The collections curator at a pioneering museum's trust says she is proud of its legacy.

The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust was set up in 1967 to run a number of museums in Shropshire, telling the story of the Industrial Revolution.

Last October it was announced the museums would be taken over by the National Trust, with the handover due to take place on 2 March.

Kate Cadman, who has been with the trust since 1982, said it had "really set standards for the whole industry".

She said Ironbridge had been "one of the first places that actually considered industrial heritage was as important as other sorts of heritage".

This had been "quite a new concept in the middle of the 20th century," she said.

Cadman also said the trust had been "groundbreaking" because it broke the mould of museums being run by local government or as private collections.

"Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust was "one of the first big new independent museums", she said, and helped to create the model of a self-funded museum.

The other idea the museums helped pioneer was the concept of an open-air, living history museum with costumed staff interacting with visitors.

When it opened, Cadman said a lot of museums "were dusty buildings that had glass cases with things in".

She said the museum's trust benefited from a lot of support in its early days from local history groups and also from the Telford Development Corporation, which established the nearby town of Telford.

In her four decades with the trust, Cadman said she had met a lot of important and interesting people, including the now King Charles.

But she said she was most proud of helping young people learn new skills through initiatives such as the Youth Training Scheme.

She said seeing them go on to get jobs afterwards gave her a lot of pride.

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