Welcome to the MIC Awards, an initiative designed to shine a light on the incredible work of our member museums and celebrate their achievements during the period Sept 2018-Sept 2019.

The wonderful winners of the 2019 MIC Awards were announced at a ceremony on 4 November in the spectacular Whale Hall of the Museum of Zoology, Cambridge. The full MIC Awards2019_Winners List is here, along with a Press Release_MiCAwardsWinners2019, announcing the winning museums.

The first of our winners was the Stained Glass Museum, who took home the ‘New for You’ Award for their Spotlight and Behind the Scenes Tours, a simple but resourceful initiative which judges noted went “straight the heart of what museums are there to do”.

 

 

Next up was the Heritage Heroes Award, this year won by the wonderful Sally Elding from Ramsey Rural Museum. Sally “created an entire audience programme from scratch, built new partnerships, generated income for the museum and shared her experiences with local museum networks.”

 

 

 

 

Project of the Year was presented to the team at Peterborough Museum & Art Gallery, managed by Vivacity, for their project ‘Treasured People and Possessions’. This initiative made “an extraordinary and far-reaching contribution to the museum sector in 2018-2019. A co-curated exhibition that reflected the most treasured belongings of people in diverse local communities, linking historic residents of the city with their modern counterparts and reinforcing the concept that heritage is not limited to a narrow view of ‘things’; but also how we relate to what we share with one another.”

 

Our Object of the Year award received 1500 votes from members of the public. With 47% of the vote, the winner was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Processor at the Cambridge Centre for Computing History.

There were six fascinating objects shortlisted for this award. You can read all about them here.

 

 

 

 

St Neots Museum won our very first Small Museum of the Year award. The Museum was described by judges to be “really listening to local communities, offering high-quality cultural opportunities that might not otherwise be available in the area. The museum team have worked tirelessly to improve every area of museum operation, generating new income streams in the process. Although limited in capacity, their achievements over the past year make them truly deserving of the title ‘Museum of the Year”.

MIC’s first Large Museum of the Year award was jointly awarded to the Cambridge Museum of Technology and the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology. Cambridge Museum of Technology “has undergone a complete transformation over the past year. Its painstaking refurbishment and the dedication of its staff to putting its collection at the heart of everything it does means that the museum not only meets the expectations of a 21^st Century visitor, but as a leading repository of information about Cambridge’s industrial past, places itself at the heart of Cambridgeshire’s heritage offer.”

 

The University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology “amazed judges by continuing to transform beyond its recent redevelopment and extending its reach by making its collection relevant to multiple new audiences. Not only has the museum achieved the highest museum accreditation standard, thanks to positive visitor feedback it succeeded in being shortlisted for a Kids in Museums Family Friendly Award. Last year, the museum exceeded expected visitor figures by 50,000, doubling the number of visits received prior to redevelopment.”

The next MIC Awards will take place in 2021.