Fresh from their attendance at the annual general meeting last week, the staff and directors of the Souris Valley Museum in Estevan are establishing some firm targets and exciting programs for the new exhibit season.
Katrina Howick, director/curator at SVM, said with careful management of a tight budget last year, the non-profit operation was able to show a small surplus, which will immediately be deployed in the plan to build a programming room at the museum located along Highway 39 west, right beside the Tourist Information Centre.
The programming room, they hope, will be built as an extension of the existing museum building or it might be contained within the existing walls, depending on cost effectiveness, said Howick.
The SVM received a grant of $128,500 from the City of Estevan to help it meet community objectives, an amount that was similar to the previous year's taxpayer contribution.
The museum has two permanent employees with Sarah Durham, a collections manager joining Howick. They will be joined by three temporary summer staff members in the form of high school or university students who will help them advance a very ambitious program.
"We will be staging a fundraising event this year," said Howick. "It will be a 1920s themed dance with a live jazz band and casino. We have booked both the large and small Legion halls for it on May 30. It should be a great time with great music."
Last year the museum welcomed 1,145 official visitors along with many more unofficial visits to the museum's outdoor displays. On top of that, there were 15 school excursions and 58 participants in last summer's museum day camps.
"We're opening on May 16 this year," said Howick, who added that once they open the doors, they will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week for the duration of the summer months.
"The day camps start in July and work through August," she said.
Senior Social Day has been set for Aug. 20 and Pioneer Fun Day is scheduled for Aug. 23.
Within the museum itself, the detailed work of cataloguing the thousands of artifacts, most of them left to the museum by local pioneer collector Stan Durr, continues. Howick said Durham is the key person on this file, and it is proceeding as planned but will still require a few more years of careful input and research before the current collection is fully catalogued.
The museum opened in the fall of 2001.
"We're organizing the firefighting display this year. That's a big job. We're getting the pioneer kitchen display in line too, making sure that the exhibit items link correctly with the timeline," Howick said.
The front entrance showcase items are changed up regularly throughout the season, with new fairy tale themes being used for the past couple of years.
"We will continue to change some items out, rotate some of the artifacts to put some on display that have been in storage. That can get done once we get some help. That's why volunteers are always welcome," said Howick.
