Barnsley Museums to embark on fundraising walk for Ukraine

On Wednesday 25 May, staff at Barnsley Museums will undertake a team walk to raise funds for the Museums Association Benevolent Fund’s Ukraine appeal.

The team were inspired to support Ukrainian colleagues after reading about the destruction of Ukraine's cultural heritage and seeing the MA’s call for support.

Participants will start at Barnsley Museums’ Cannon Hall site, an 18^th-century country house with links to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and take in local heritage landmarks including wagonways, furnaces and historic houses. The walk will tie in with Barnsley’s month-long walking festival and follows Creativity and Wellbeing Week.

Lynn Dunning, Barnsley Council's group leader for arts and heritage, said: “We wanted to do something to show our solidarity with our colleagues in Ukraine, and the wider community, at this terrible time. The walk is also a great way for us to come together as a team after the pandemic and show our commitment to health and wellbeing.”

The MA's appeal supports Icom Poland’s scheme to assist Ukrainian museum professionals arriving there as refugees. Three-month grants will help Ukrainian museum workers arriving in Poland to meet their basic needs, and support them in identifying job opportunities and creating new networks in Poland and beyond.

Barnsley has close links with Ukraine and is twinned with Horlivka (Gorlovka) in the Donetsk city region. Its ties with the area date back to May 1956, when a delegation of miners from Yorkshire stayed in the town during a study tour of the Soviet Union.

The team will be posting from their walk next week on social media (@barnsleymuseums). If you would like to support the team’s initiative, please make a donation to the MA’s Ukraine appeal.

Are you planning any fundraising activities to support the Benevolent Fund's Ukraine appeal? Let us know at geraldine@museumsassociation.org