Museum of the Year 2021

(Image courtesy of Firstsite)

5th October 2021

By Juliette Moisan

On the 21st September at the Science Museum in London, the winner of this year's edition of the Museum of the Year Award, granted by the Art Fund, was announced. Firstsite, in Colchester, Essex, won this edition and will therefore be receiving a grant of £100.000 to pursue its development. Firstsite was chosen as the winner out of a pool of four other candidates, namely the Centre for Contemporary Art in Derry, the Experience Barnsley, the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds and the Timespan in Helmsdale. To partake in the competition and be short-listed, the museums who applied had to answer three questions: what has been achieved in the past that showed imagination and determination? How do you think this made a difference? How will you build on this in the future? Simon Wallis, director of Museum of the Year, stressed that, among the five nominees on the short list, "everyone is a winner".

Indeed, despite Firstsite winning the grant and the prize, the four other museums short-listed will be receiving a grant of £15.000 in recognition of the work they have done throughout the years to develop, and especially in of the work they have put in over the last year. Art Fund director Jenny Waldman stressed that, in these unprecedented times, the resilience museums have shown "is nothing short of heroic", and that the grants will serve as an encouragement for them to continue stepping the path with positive initiatives.

This year is a crossroads for Firstsite as, besides being the recipient of the grant, the museum is also celebrating its tenth birthday. In its unusual and striking building, the museum aims to continue in its course. Having acquired a reputation for putting on ambitious and ground-breaking works, Firstsite aims to celebrate the diversity, the creativity and the innovation of the people of its region but also of the world. Throughout the pandemic, the Firstsite's team also put in a lot of work to maintain some sorts of normal, with actions ranging from the distribution of welfare packages to talks promoting the importance of mental health in a situation of crisis. The gallery, which had been placed under special funding measures due to the uncertainty of its future six years ago, now has the funds to invest in its future and develop many new projects.

In the past, the grants have benefitted numerous museums, with both household names such as the Albert & Victoria Museum in London receiving the prize in 2016, or smaller museums like the St Fagans in Cardiff in 2019. Last year, the Art Fund upped the grant to £200.000 to split it evenly between the five candidates (the Aberdeen Art Gallery, the Gairloch Museum in Wester Ross, the Science Museum and the South London Gallery in London, and the Towner Eastbourne). The Art Fund Museum of the Year prize might be relatively young, as it started in 2013, but it lies within a process that has been going on since 1973, regularly changing name throughout history. Regardless of the name the prize bears, it has consistently bolstered innovation and creativity, giving the means to museums to invest in themselves and in their community, as well as enabling culture and art to be spread outside of stricter bounds.