Today marks my first week as Director of Historic Buildings & Places, and what a great first week it has been!
As always when you start a new job, I feel like I have asked 100 questions an hour, and finding things seems to have been all I have done. Looking back now, I am already starting to feel part of the team, and can see how much I have already learned.
It was wonderful to be welcomed by Christina, Stefanie and Ross into the office, and I have already worked out that I am going to drink more tea than all of them put together! I have spent time with each of them, starting to understand their role, and been massively impressed with what I have learnt, the quality of the casework being undertaken, the imagination used in different ways to communicate with those interested in us, and the care taken to enable our membership programme. Alison has also kindly taken me though everything I need for my handover, and is thankfully on the end of an email if I need her for a few more weeks. We really have a team to be proud of here at HB&P, and I can’t wait to work with them all.
Putting all the upcoming dates for the membership programme in my diary was one of the first jobs, I am so looking forward to attending my first event at Bentley Priory Museum on the 22nd, and getting to meet some of our members, not to mention having a great afternoon out. Bentley Priory is a Museum I have not been to before, which, having come from working in Museums, is unusual and exciting for me.
I was also very lucky to be able to meet the other Directors of the Amenity Societies, as I joined them for a discussion about a new Chair for the joint committee meetings. I received a very warm welcome, and am now setting up meetings with each of them to find out more about their organisations and how we might work together in the future.
And by Friday it was good to watch HB&P play our part in the kick off of the campaign about the opposition to the plans at Liverpool Street station, a very good reminder why the work that we do is so important.
So a great first week, even if by the end my brain felt very full of new information, the starting of plans, and the understanding of new things. How lucky I feel to have a new role that makes me feel so excited for the future.
