CRAVEN Museum's successful year was summed up by specialist BBC researcher, Adam Schoon, who said there were more interesting things there than he would expect to find in a museum 10 times its size.

In the past year no fewer than 11 items from the collections have been featured on the BBC's antiques programme, Going for a Song.

Its progress in 1998 has led to the Celtic Craven millennium project and a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a fixed term education and outreach officer post under the New Horizons initiative.

This post will be a key tool in tackling challenges facing the museum in 1999, including an underdeveloped audience of young people, an urgent need to make the museum meaningful to residents in rural Craven and poor standards of display.

The new officer will develop national curriculum-linked resources, identify and equip a space for museum education work, introduce a range of activities and workshops for visitors, and build stronger links with educational agencies and other heritage attractions.

If the bid is successful, the officer will hopefully be appointed by the summer.

In the next three years, the project also wants to build up the outreach side of the museum's work in order to reach new audiences, raise the museum's profile and meet the needs of those who are unable to come into the museum.

This provision will take a number of forms.

Discovery boxes, designed to stimulate the imagination, will contain objects for handling, and reminiscence kits will contain items selected to evoke memories of life earlier this century.

Mini exhibitions secured within perspex cases will be small enough to be put in the back of a car, and used at various venues including libraries, schools and village halls.

Members of Craven District Council Community Services Committee have suggested that the museum should consider a page on the internet to help publicise the museum and to reach a wider audience.

The Craven Museum was founded in 1928 by three local educational bodies; the Skipton Mechanics' Institute, the Adult School (Quaker) and the Craven Naturalists.

Its main educational strength today lies in its rich and varied collections reflecting the geology, natural history, archaeology and social history of Craven. A further strength is its position in Craven, an area of geographic and historical interest to schools and universities.

The most significant weaknesses are the limited number of staff, and also the lack of space.

The museum occupies one large gallery and there are no separate facilities. School parties must sit on the floor as members of the public move around them.

Community services committee chairman Coun Beth Graham suggested that they ought to start thinking about the adequacy of the facilities and perhaps look to see if the museum should be moved to larger premises in the future.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.