Friends of Hadrian's Wall

[Guest North West Frontier]

The organisation that coordinates the management of the Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site is, in advance of it becoming a charity (The Hadrian's Wall Trust), launching a new Friends scheme that will enable people to be part of the ongoing protection, enhancement and promotion of Hadrian's Wall Country as an internationally significant site.

 

We've put together the following and, as people with an existing interest in the empire i'd be interested in your feedback:

 

As a Friend of Hadrian

[Guest North West Frontier]

This scheme isn't live as yet by the way but wanted to test it out on an educated audience.

[GhostOfClayton]

I'm sold, but I work for an industry that uses the wall (and National Trail), so may not be a good example.

 

The comparison must be to English Heritage membership. This is

Edited September 27, 2011 by GhostOfClayton

[Guest North West Frontier]

Thanks GoC.

 

I'll feed your input into the mix.

 

We do already work very closely with EH and NT as well as Tyne & Wear Museums. We also work with the Vindolanda Trust but haven't as yet agreed to an access to sites element to the package.

 

We hope to build these in in due course though.

[Melvadius]

The list of benefits you are proposing look very attractive for someone intending to visit the Wall in the near future but ultimately the main thing you need to be able to do is convince potential long term members that you are both offering a something different to what they can get through membership of other organisations and also that what you are doing will have a net benefit to the 'Wall' experience for the future.

 

I'm already a Friend of Vindolanda and also have Heritage membership so even if I do not visit from one year to the next I continue renewing on the basis that my membership money is going into the long term work they undertake be it excavation, conservation or publication.

[Guest North West Frontier]

Cheers Melvadius - its one of those tricky things as we are charged by UNESCO with protecting, enhancing and communicating the values of the World Heritage Site. Essentially this means looking after the whole 150 miles of it, making it more joined up, making it more attractive to people who want to visit, learn and enjoy and then promote it as a destination. As the more people who are interested and visit, the more demand there will be for better interpretation, more museums etc.. We do have people out on the Wall every day and we have 100 volunteers who look after specific sections but don't actually own any land as such - we are the umbrella body.