Commercial Opportunities

St Fagans: National History Museum

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales invites expressions of interest to run the following operations at St Fagans: National History Museum: the Bakery, the Pottery and the ‘Horse and Carriage Rides’.

St Fagans: National History Museum is situated on the outskirts of Cardiff and is part of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. It is one of Europe’s biggest and most exciting open air museums and is the most visited heritage attraction in Wales drawing some 650,000 visitors a year. Set in 104 acres of woodlands and gardens, over 40 historic buildings from all over Wales have been carefully removed and re-erected at the Museum.

The Museum shows how the people of Wales have lived, worked and spent their leisure time. Craftsmen demonstrate their skills, traditional farming tasks and techniques are part of the daily round and native livestock can be seen grazing in the fields.

The galleries provide a perspective on the Museum’s collections. Oriel 1 explores the meaning of identity and belonging in 21st century Wales reflecting on the diversity of cultures and communities. Other galleries focus on costume, textiles and agriculture.

The Pottery

The Museum is looking for a potter who will demonstrate the craft of pottery making at the St Fagans Pottery on a commercial basis and will produce traditional and modern pottery to a standard acceptable to the Museum.

The potter will ensure that St Fagans Pottery is open to the public during the Museum’s normal opening hours and will demonstrate pottery making techniques explaining the process thereby involved to visitors to the Museum. It is essential to have a working knowledge of the Welsh tradition of the craft of pottery.

If required by the Museum, the potter should be willing to provide talks and courses in pottery making to groups.

The potter will equip the workshop with suitable pottery making equipment.

The Bakery

The Museum is looking for a baker who will carry on the trade of baking at Popty’r Dderwen on a commercial basis but on traditional lines and complying with an early 20th century pattern, including firing the oven with hardwood timber and kneading all dough and mixtures by hand using utensils and tools approved by the Museum.

The baker will demonstrate bread and cake making only and retail these and a limited number of authentic sweets to visitors.

The baker will ensure that the bakery is open to the public during Museum opening hours except for an annual maintenance period.

Horse and Carriage rides

The operator will make ‘Horse and Carriage rides’ available to visitors at the Museum during normal opening hours between March and the end of October. The operator will be required to provide their own vehicles, equipment and horses and will be responsible for the feeding and care of the horses.

The driver of the vehicles should be dressed in an appropriate manner: bowler hat, hacking jacket, breeches/jodhpurs and riding boots.

A maximum of three horses can be kept at the stables at Llwyn-yr-eos farm at the Museum.

Operators should be able to provide public liability insurance cover.

Expressions of interest for all of the above should be returned to the Museum by 22 July 2011. The Museum will then issue an invitation to tender to those who have registered their interest.