I’m Nigel Blackamore, the new Museum Business and Partnerships Manager for Pontypridd Town Council at Pontypridd Museum. Career-wise, I was an archaeologist in a former life, I left Cardiff University and joined the National Museum. I spent about 10 years in the National Museum and then travelled up to Brecon and became the Senior Curator there to lead the project with the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore, redevelop and reinterpret the collections in Brecon. That took a number of years and the project got bigger and bigger and we eventually co-located with the town library with a brand-new building and our historic grade II* listed Shire Hall, which we re-developed back into the museum, restoring the courtroom and bringing it back to life. 

That project came to a conclusion after Covid, so I spent the last couple of years finishing up things there and I reached a point where a new challenge was in order. After 15 years in Brecon, it seemed a good opportunity to get some fresh blood into that building

and take that project to the next level. 

What interests me particularly about Pontypridd are the developments that have been happening in the last few years around the museum. With the brand-new library, the Transport for Wales hub, the Yma YMCA building and the discussions around the Muni Arts Centre, it just struck me that these are all so close together, that what we’ve got is a very tight cultural quarter in Pontypridd and I could see that the museum was the missing piece. The museum is much loved - it’s been open since the 1980s, but it hasn’t really changed. 

I think now’s the time for us to look at that and with some funding like the new buildings that have surrounded it, the museum can grow and become the heart of that cultural quarter. Museums to me are all about education and community and we need to be at the centre of the community. We’ve now got a new, sparkling library outside our building with a road crossing in between us, which is an easy partner for us to sit with. All of the arrows point to one thing, which are exciting possibilities ahead.

My first priority is to evaluate the collection to see what treasures we have, identify what objects and collections are loved by the public and to discover what further treasures we have in our research collections. There’s an opportunity to bring out and really play with the way that we interpret and display objects and engage new audiences. I’m incredibly keen to increase the footfall and to see the building be vibrant and have lots of new people coming to see it for the first time. 

We’ve had our challenges - particularly with the floods back in 2020, a lot of work went into saving the museum and bringing it back. Now that we’ve saved the collections and we’re in a better position, we’ve got an opportunity to go to the next level, which is ultimately to re-display, reinterpret and re-evaluate everything. I’m starting to get to know the building itself, it won’t be long before I know it like the back of my hand and then we can hopefully start to bring out the beauty of the building once again and organise lots of activities and

 events and make the museum the beating heart of the community, as it always has been - it’s a case of restarting after the

challenges of the flooding and of course Covid.

These things will take time, particularly in the current climate, but there are things we can do quite quickly. We want to be a warm space, we’re not an official warm space but we want to be able to offer people the opportunity to come in and get involved. We want to offer the community the opportunity to volunteer with us and come and help us with the collections. We have a little team of volunteers and expanding that will help us to reinvigorate the collection management and find those community links. Also, education - the schools' curriculum has changed for Wales, there’s a really big opportunity for us to engage with local schools

 and bring heritage and a sense of place to life. 

If people would like to get involved and volunteer and if local schools would like to get in touch, the first port of call would

 be to come into the building and speak to us or to send us an email - the address is:

 museum@pontypriddtowncouncil.gov.uk or give us a call on 01443 490740.