There are six museums in Leicester, the main attraction being the New Walk Museum on New Walk. This pillared marvel, reminiscent of a by-gone age of empire and neoclassicism, was my museum of choice, it looks like the museum in your head. Another of Leicesters six museums is the Newarke Houses, which is a preserved set of buildings and a garden. It is only speculation, but I wonder if a typo, or a carelessly pronounced word in a telephone call might have addressed Newarke museum instead of New Walk museum. I will probably never know.
At this stage you see the project was at a halt, defeated and thoroughly discredited, the project that never was.
Just to add salt to the wound my girlfriend left me and my Nan died all in this same month.
But…before you start declaring “can this text get any more depressing?” hold fast dear reader, for a series of positive steps followed this apparent oblivion.
I had previously sent out feelers to cultural groups, Universities and individuals that I had wanted to involve in the project, and this had formed much of the research for the original ACE application. At the time I had simply expressed an interest in involving each party and in turn each had expressed their provisional support.
An email appeared in my inbox at the beginning of the Summer of 2007. It was from the Leicester Council of Faiths, belatedly expressing their interest in the project and offering to take part in the research. I thought about this for a couple of days before writing to the Head of the Jewry Wall Museum, and asking if it would be possible to gain access to the stores as a researcher. This request was accepted, and I began re-thinking how I might be able to produce the same project, but without the support of the City Gallery or the New Walk. Another stroke of good fortune, ACE offered their support for the project second time around. I suddenly had a budget, but an uncertain future if I could not produce an audience in the thousands! I felt that this audience issue could wait, being that I would have a year to achieve this before ACE would come back to me for results. I restructured the project around the idea of interviews and focus groups being the medium whereby experts could feed into the project and arranged to meet the LCoF the following month.
