The Hockey Museum (THM) is delighted to announce that it has awarded the contract to scope hockey’s worldwide heritage to the Justine Reilly Consultancy (JRC).

The team will be headed up by Dr Justine Reilly, who has 15 years experience of managing large multi-partner heritage programmes and extensive experience of working with museums, particularly sports museums. She will be joined by Dr Carol Osborne, a Sports, Leisure and Culture lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, Janice Tulloch, a heritage and archives consultant, and Dr Dave Day, a Reader in Sports History at Manchester Metropolitan University.

THM and JRC will be working together over the next nine months to define the approach needed to deliver the desire of the International Hockey Federation (FIH) to develop a worldwide network of hockey archives and researchers, and to produce an authoritative history of the worldwide game and of the FIH.

THM is excited to have teamed up with JRC to tackle this innovative project. Chair of THM Board of Trustees, Katie Dodd, said “Justine and her team impressed us with the breadth and depth of knowledge and expertise that they will be able to bring to the challenge. Their enthusiasm for the project will match that of the current team of THM volunteers.”

The FIH is the major sponsor of this project and speaking about the work, FIH President Leandro Negre said “This is a really exciting initiative which is hugely important to preserving the history of our sport. Hockey has an incredibly rich worldwide heritage which requires greater cohesion and direction. This project will provide the momentum to enable us to celebrate this heritage as part of, and in support of, the modern game and in doing so help inspire many more people to engage with and play hockey.”

The full brief for this work can be found in the tender document, which can be downloaded by clicking the icon to the right. Justine and her team will be consulting widely to establish existing pockets of hockey heritage, talk to hockey historians, understand the challenges of developing archives in different environments and establish how we can develop and celebrate hockey’s heritage for the benefit of the modern game.

If anyone wants to find out more or would like to contribute to this work, please contact Katie Dodd via the contact form.

Katie Dodd, Chair THM Board of Trustees
19 January 2016