Welcoming our new Curatorial and Learning Manager

This month we’re excited to welcome our new Curatorial and Learning Manager, Kate Reeder, to the team. 

Kate joins the museum from Lowestoft Town Council, where she was Town Hall Heritage Manager. She has a strong background in museums and heritage, having previously spent seven years at the National Trust as a Visitor Experience Consultant, and 12 years at the Beamish Museum specialising in their social history collections.  

As Curatorial and Learning Manager, Kate will oversee our collections management; exhibitions and events programming; learning and schools offer; and outreach work. 

Over the coming months she’ll be working with our curators on a long-term project to improve collections management and review our acquisitions policy. Part of this will involve renewing our Arts Council UK Museum Accreditation, which ensures our governance, collections management and visitor engagement meets the UK industry standard for museums and galleries. 

Kate will also work with the Curatorial and Learning team to shape our future exhibitions and events programmes. Her specialism in visitor experience will be particularly invaluable here as we seek to better understand our visitors and utilise this knowledge to inform our future programming. 

Sarah Davies, Museums Manager, says Kate’s work in the coming months will be vital in helping the museum to engage with and represent Chelmsford’s diverse communities:  

“We’re delighted to welcome Kate to our team at Chelmsford Museum. Her impressive background in local museums and visitor experience projects will be vital to us as we look to improve community engagement and make our museum accessible to all. She has a fantastic Curatorial and Learning team to work with and I’m looking forward to seeing what they achieve in the coming months.” 

Kate is excited to get to work exploring the museum’s extraordinary collections and connecting with the wider community: 

“I am absolutely thrilled to be joining the team at Chelmsford Museum, and I’ve already been busy in recent days immersing myself in its fabulous and diverse collections! This is a wonderful opportunity to embark on an exhilarating journey and contribute to a phenomenally hardworking team. I’m particularly excited to work alongside Chelmsford’s communities in the coming months, as we explore how we can build an inspiring future for the museum.” 

When she’s not delving through museum collections, Kate walks her Labrador, Sam, around the countryside whilst trying in vain to keep him from leaping into every puddle and stream! Inspired by the Great British Sewing Bee, she also enjoys making clothes, and aspires to meet the standards of the show’s judges.