tsunami memorial update
robertb
12/21/2008
An update on the proposed tsunami memorial
21 December 2008 Dear All, Steve and I had been planning to e-mail you regarding progress (or lack of) on the proposed memorial for over two months. We have been waiting for a promised update from the Natural History Museum, and unfortunately we are still waiting. We had a meeting with the D.C.M.S. on 18th September when we were informed that the N.H.M. had some serious concerns, and we have been working since then to try to resolve these and to point out the synergies of our project for both the N.H.M. and TS (UK). There was a trustees meeting of the board of the Natural History Museum on 25 November when a decision was made to select one of several landscaping proposals for the entrance to Darwin 2. The N.H.M. was reluctant to make any decisions about a memorial until this decision was made. At this time we do not know the result. Dr. Michael Dixon, the Director of the Natural History Museum and Frances MacLeod, Deputy Director, Humanitarian Assistance, Department for Culture, Media and Sport have agreed to draft a proposal for the memorial, in a format that complies with N.H.M. board proposals, to submit to the next trustees meeting to be held on 24th February 2009. The proposal will include details of how the project will be run and how the design team will operate. The N.H.M. will want to have the Darwin Centre 2 open to the public (September 2009) and the teething problems sorted before studying the details of our memorial project. This will not prevent us from starting the design process once we have the trustee’s approval. It appears that when the NHM accepted the idea of hosting the tsunami memorial, they had underestimated the workload that would be imposed by: - New responsibilities, as the museum is to be managed at greater arm’s length by the DCMS.
- Pressure to increase revenue, which means that revenue producing activities and facilities will need to be incorporated in the entrance to Darwin 2, with a concern that these would not be compatible with the requirements of the memorial.
· The complexities of opening the Darwin 2 museum on schedule in a financially and politically complicated period. The N.H.M. has raised several concerns that they thought might want to make us change our minds about the choice of the N.H.M. for our project, but from the details we were given these do not at first appear to be insurmountable. We feel that there are strong reasons for pursuing the N.H.M. site and will publish these shortly on our web site for your comments. For our next A.G.M. Frances has provisionally booked the meeting room at the DCMS for Saturday 4th April (last weekend before Easter) and hopefully we will be able to present the proposed site for the memorial at the NHM, or of alternatives if the 24 February meeting is negative. She will also ask the NHM whether the meeting could be held there which would be even better. (She has pointed out that providing a venue for our A.G.M. is not a permanent facility for us and that in future years we should we should make our own arrangements as we have done in the past.) As soon as we have more definite information we will post it on our web site. We realise that our web site needs re-activating and any contributions will be welcome. We fully realise that this letter is too close to the anniversary, now the fourth but the pain does not go away. We hope that you will keep yourselves occupied and that you will all find compassionate people with whom to pass this difficult week. Best wishes and courage to you all, Steve and Robert Co:Chairs, Tsunami Support (U.K.)
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