The Gardens Trust is delighted to welcome Frankie Taylor as our new Audience Development and Engagement Officer. Frankie will be working on the ‘Engaging with our Future’ project, which is being supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. She brings a range of skills from working in the charity and heritage sectors, which will help us to reach new audiences and expand our supporter base for a more secure future.
Previous audience engagement experience
Frankie Taylor has previously produced exhibitions, events, training and outreach activities for the National Archives, Explore York Libraries and even for the Natural History Museum (despite her real job there being to photograph their palaeontology collections). She also spent three years working for a small charity in Tower Hamlets, one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, where she taught and mentored young people who had been excluded from school.
She describes this as one of the most eye opening and challenging experiences of her career as she juggled helping vulnerable young people and families in desperate circumstances with the day to day running of a charity (admin, fundraising, creating a website, cleaning!). Most recently Frankie worked for English Heritage on another NLHF project called Shout Out Loud where she engaged a range of young people from all sorts of backgrounds with heritage on creative, youth-led projects.
Working with the Gardens Trust
Frankie said: ‘I’m so pleased to be joining you all at what feels like a really exciting moment for the Trust. I’ve come a long way since starting out in heritage with a BA and MSc in Archaeology. I’ve got a range of experience that means I can wear lots of different hats at different times – something that I hope will stand me in good stead during my time at the Gardens Trust. I’m really looking forward to having lots of interesting conversations with you all over the coming months as I begin to gather ideas and plan how to deliver the three pilot projects set out in the NLHF project plan. But most of all I’m excited to help show off all of the amazing things you already do to a wider audience, making sure the Gardens Trust’s important work continues long into the future.’
