My role as trustee and chairman of The Olive Matthews Collection (1983 to 2016) was a long and positive one; I’ve been involved with this collection from the outset of my museum career. It is one of the finest small collections in the UK, based at Chertsey Museum and the trust’s involvement allows it to acquire, conserve and display to the highest standards and to audiences of all ages. The museum has excellent staff, imaginative programmes and an enviable reputation as a regional centre of excellence. 

Other experiences of committee/trustee work were with the precursor of DATS – the specialist group for dress and textile curators in the UK which I helped to found with like-minded colleagues in the mid-1970s, it was then called the Group for Costume and Textile Staff in Museums. I was a member of the Crafts Council’s conservation committee in the 1980s and the Museum of London’s trust funds in the 1980s and 1990s. I became a trustee of the Bullard and Callow trust funds in the 1990s, originally administered by the Museums Association, and later with the addition of the Elizabeth Hammond trust funds of the Costume Society as an independent Association. The Association closed in 2023; its funds are now administered by the Costume Society (Bullard and Hammond), and by the South West Fed (Kathy Callow Legacy Fund). 

In the 1980s I was briefly a trustee of The Costume Society and became an active trustee and programme organiser from 2001/2 onwards. I was chairman between 2004 and 2009; amongst other initiatives I introduced the Museum Placement Award to offer project grants to potential curators during a downturn in the funding of such collections. 

Work for and with these organisations and trusts has assisted individuals and groups, and enhanced provision of the finest standards of dress and textile curatorship in private and public museums and galleries. Independent charitable sources of funding continue to be important as all arts’ organisations cope with limited local and national financial commitment to the arts. 

All of these organisations can be found on the links page of this website.