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It has been quite a while since I sat down to write my last CEO blog and that is because our team has expanded yet again! With the addition of new staff and the creation of new roles our team have found even more stories for us to share and that has meant that you don’t have to see or hear from me alone anymore! To find my last blog I had to go all the way back to October and in that piece, I talked about the Museum re-opening after the long lockdown. Rather than focus on the

I am very excited to be able to say that the Museum is now open! What a year it has been! After such a tumultuous 2020 we never expected to face a more challenging 2021. This year the lockdown lasted much longer than the previous year and we were forced to stand down all of our staff either completely or partially (including myself and the senior management team). When the Museum closed its doors in June 2021, we were experiencing a high having come off our busiest year for v

What are we up to now and what was happening then? It is very timely to be writing this blog as we near the end of another month in lockdown. Being the end of the month, I am in the usual process of signing off on our financials and other projects, so it is a great time for reflection. With the Museum closed until further notice we have had to adapt our public offerings and this has meant that we are heavily focusing upon digital content. A few weeks ago, we hosted our first

For nearly 20 days the Museum of Fire has now been closed to the public. That is 20 days without any income from visitation, our primary form of fundraising activity. When it seemed that lockdown would be just two weeks we remained as positive as we could given the circumstances. The school holidays were to be our busiest ever so being closed for the holidays was soul crushing but where possible we tried to keep on as many staff as was feasible. As we entered week three of lo

As always, I find myself incredibly busy and often overwhelmed when I sit down to write these blogs for our website, but I also have a great sense of accomplishment as I write this particular blog. In the last few months, we have continued to kick a number of goals, from creating new exhibits and engaging with new audiences, to presenting new events and ways for us to promote the Museum to a wider community. One major event that took place at the Museum last month was Fire an

Today, 18 May 2021, is International Museum Day; an event celebrated annually by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). This special day also coincides with Library and Information Week 2021, which is held from 17 to 23 May in Australia. Last year, as the day rolled around, it was hard to find something to celebrate as we remained in lockdown with no known re-opening date in sight. One cause for positivity though was that on 18 May 2020, our Curator, Laura, was to comme

Last Thursday, 6 May 2021, the Museum was pleased to open our latest temporary exhibition: “ Our Heritage” . As an organisation that focuses so heavily on the past, we tend to overlook our own history in favour of pursuing other stories. But our history is important, too. Drawing on our heritage collections, this exhibition follows the Museum’s early development through to the organisation that it is today. The building the Museum occupies through to the objects and memories

I write this blog feeling very tired but incredibly proud of the effort put forth by the Museum team over the past few weeks. For the first time, the Museum’s newly formed team attended the Sydney Royal Easter Show. We were invited to attend alongside Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) and it was an opportunity we could not pass up! Forming part of the FRNSW exhibit, the Museum presented two heritage vehicles (a Dennis ‘Jag’ and an ‘Ace’ ), and had a pop-up shop on site. As this was

Those of you that are avid readers of our blog will have realised by now that this week’s piece is coming to you much later than normal, but we have a very good reason why. As everyone no doubt knows, Penrith; where the Museum is located, faced a flood warning, the likes of which had not been seen in over fifty years. The last time Penrith saw the waters rise like this was in November 1961 when half of the area’s average annual rainfall fell in just two days. Despite the risi

We’ve only just begun March and already 2021 has been a very busy year for the Museum and our amazing staff! Following on from the success of the Museum’s 2020 Art Competition exhibition and awards ceremony we hosted our first Heritage Day for 2021. To kick off our heritage days we chose the theme “Dennis”. The reason for this was that it was 50 years ago, back in 1971 that the Board of Fire Commissioners of NSW (today Fire and Rescue NSW) placed 42 new Dennis pumpers into se