The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre is getting used to its new housemate.
“They’re almost like new colleagues in a way,” says Sarah Carr-Locke, Director of the Heritage Centre. She’s talking about the Visitors Centre and how they’ve moved into the museum. “We’re happy about it. We actually reached out to the Visitors Association when we heard that they’d have to move out of the building. We’ve always had a healthy working relationship and we share similar mandates with how we serve visitors. We thought it’d be a great temporary pairing.”
While the Visitors Centre is receiving the funding for the move from the government, Carr-Locke says that the museum has no part of it.
“We’re a part of Education, Culture and Employment, so we’re a part of the Culture and Heritage Division of E-C-E. We actually have no part of the funding whatsoever.”
There is an overlap in interests, however. Carr-Locke says that the agreement would benefit both sides with having them so close.
“They send a lot of the tourists our way, so we thought, ‘well, a lot of the same people would be visiting the same locations’; we figured we might as well make it easier for a few people. It’s nice to help out.”
Despite the perfect pairing situation blooming, Carr-Locke says that it will always be a temporary fix. The museum signed a memorandum of understanding with the Northern Frontier Visitors Association that puts the deadline for the Visitors Centre to October. It will be up to the NFVA to decide where the Centre goes from there.
