The Postal Museum opened in London in June 2017, based upon its extensive postal collections and archives, and featuring an underground ride through abandoned mail tunnels.

Julia acted as mentor to five members of staff writing the Activity Plan, Training Plan, Volunteering Plan, Business Plan, Conservation Plan and Management and Maintenance Plan and the Round 2 form itself.  This involved regular contact with the authors of the documents, issuing a project plan for all documents, advising on consultation and activities, issuing task lists, report templates and examples of good practice to the authors, meeting them regularly and editing all documents.

They were so pleased with our work that they invited Julia Holberry Associates back to evaluate the delivery of the activity programme and the capital works. For the capital works, we interviewed all the stakeholders, consultants and contractors involved in the project soon after the building was completed, producing a specific report that evaluated the success of the capital programme.

For the measurement of the activity programme, we designed the evaluation framework and toolkit and trained the staff to use the toolkit effectively, so that they took ownership of the evaluation process and were confident in using the evaluation tools.  This approach also ensured that they gathered full and robust data over the long-term life of the project.  We supported staff over a period of two years and came back towards the end of the life of the project to analyse of the all the quantitative data that had been collected, including exhibition, events, online, volunteer monitoring and archive user surveys.  We supplemented this with qualitative consultation with key participants, including community groups, teachers and student placements.

We completed the evaluation with staff and volunteer workshop to reflect on the project successes, its impact on both the heritage and the organisation, and lessons learned, and went on to complete a full evaluation report. The Activity Plan also included a Volunteering Plan, Training Plan and Evaluation Framework