This August and September we are pleased to be hosting an exhibition of paintings by members of Crawley Art Society.

Most of the paintings are for sale.

Crawley’s Collections Revealed  was a 18 month project funded by Arts Council England. We worked with volunteers and community members to look at and talk about our collections. We want our collection to reflect the diversity of the history of Crawley, and this project and exhibition is about people working together to achieve that.

As part of the project, a group of volunteers worked together to go through the museum’s object collection to make sure that everything was relevant to Crawley. Some items were removed from the collection and dispersed elsewhere. Some objects went to the museums education collection, some to other museums or other organisations and some had to be destroyed for safety reasons.

We also worked with members of the local community to label objects from our collections, and to decide what should be added to our collection.

To start with all of these sessions were taking place in person but then Covid-19 happened and our activities moved online.

The content of this exhibition is largely written by project volunteers and some of the people who took part in the community workshops.

If government restrictions allow, we will be creating a physical version of this exhibition which will be in Crawley Museum from 3rd June to 31st July 2021.

Thank you to everyone who was part of this project!

Music has always been an important part of life in Crawley. In this exhibition we explore some of the music in Crawley that is within living memory.

This would not have been possible without the generosity of the people who have shared their memories and photographs and who have loaned us objects.

If you would like to share your memories of music in Crawley with us then please get in touch!

The exhibition is free but as an independent museum we’d really love it if you’re able to make a donation – thanks!

Originally part of a temporary exhibition, the Happy Memories Quilt is now on display in our permanent galleries.

The creators of the quilt wrote:

“To celebrate the 70^Th Birthday of Crawley New Town, Refugees Welcome – Crawley made a plan to mark this historical occasion by setting up a Community Sewing Project in November 2016.

The idea to start a sewing project stemmed from the desire to get people together from all areas of the Community giving them the opportunity to share a space, talk and sew whatever their sewing ability. Our aim was to have a finished piece that reflected the community in Crawley New Town in it’s 70^th Year.

Our project needed a theme and we chose to produce a piece of work that would represent the happy memories that people hold here in Crawley – no matter where their memories are from.

To get the project underway, we needed: a workspace, materials, and sewers.

For our weekly, 1 hour sewing sessions a venue was kindly donated by the Catholic Parish in Crawley. For those members of the community who could not attend weekly, we also ran some one-day workshops in the school holidays in the Friary Church Hall in the town centre.

Our materials consisted of generous donations from individuals, local organsations and businesses. Participants could use any of the textile donations and other design and sewing materials which were provided at the sewing sessions or they could use their own.

The call-out for sewers went out to local community organisations, in ‘Crawley Live’ and word of mouth resulting in a steady number of enthusiastic sewers every week of all ages and from all over Crawley and beyond.

After nearly a year and a half since the project started, the quilt was finished. It has 56 lovingly-made squares and hand-stitched gold lettering with the motto for Crawley New Town;

‘I grow and I rejoice’.

Thank you to Crawley Museum for getting behind the project and providing a space for the quilt in the  museum.”