Great potential seen for Ferrymead

Press, 8 October 1988, Page 7

Great potential seen for Ferrymead

None of the 32 museums he visited on a recent overseas trip had the potential of Ferrymead Historic Park, said the park’s director, Mr Robin Sutton.

Mr Sutton has recently returned from an eightweek study tour of museums in Northern Europe and Britain. He said the museum that most resembled Ferrymead Historic Park was a transport museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, but it did not have the space that Ferrymead had to offer rides on vintage transport.

The amount of land at Ferrymead is considered by Mr Sutton to be one of its main advantages and an asset that could be a money-earner for the park. He said the park management was looking at ways the land at Ferrymead, much of it unused, could be better used.

A lack of money was

the main obstacle to Ferrymead’s providing the sort of total entertainment experience that the best overseas museums offered. “We have sorted out any basic internal organisational problems and have a far clearer idea of where we are going than we did a few years back,” Mr Sutton said.

Ferrymead’s board of trustees was committed to a market-led philosophy and recently held a futures seminar attended by trustee board members, volunteers and management staff to discuss the future of the park. Many overseas museums employed theatre set designers and movie directors to create an exciting and memorable experience where visitors were encouraged to touch and do things which would bring history alive for them, Mr Sutton said.

Many of these experi-

ences and skills could be duplicated at Ferrymead, he said. He believed this would happen but it would take time and could involve sending people overseas to see the museums and learn how the desired effects were achieved.

Mr Sutton said impact was achieved by bringing a number of different aspects together. There was no one solution to making Ferrymead more successful. ‘