The Hockey Museum (THM) Trustees are delighted to announce that the FIH Foundation for the Promotion & Development of Hockey (the FIH Foundation) and THM have signed an agreement (a Memorandum of Understanding) that formalises the collaboration between them to work together to preserve hockey’s heritage. The key aims are as follows:

• To provide opportunities to increase the visibility of the sport and to effectively celebrate the achievements and progress of hockey;
• To preserve an accurate story of hockey and provide access to authoritative historical archives and statistical data;
• To preserve and make available historical information and materials for use in a wide variety of ways e.g. for educational purposes and enquiries from hockey fans; and
• To work towards creating an international hockey museum and archives.

The agreement was signed in Antwerp during the recent ‘Road to Rio’ Olympic Qualifying Tournament and where THM had been invited to present to the FIH Foundation Meeting. This presentation outlined our vision – Giving Hockey’s History a Future – and key aims for the next five years. The presentation also detailed proposals for projects that will put THM on a sound and professional Museum footing and give us more clarity for how we take on the new international dimension to our remit.

The official press release can be found on the FIH website.

The FIH had considered setting up an FIH Museum in Lausanne but when their President, Leandro Negre, visited us in Woking during 2014 and saw what the Museum had already achieved through the efforts of an enthusiastic, knowledgeable and professional volunteer team with a ‘can do’ mentality there was a rethink. He then encouraged the FIH to put its support behind The Hockey Museum setup to take a lead in tackling hockey’s worldwide heritage challenge. The fact that the FIH, hockey’s world governing body, has gone into partnership with us is a fantastic vote of confidence in THM and its ability to bring something unique and worthwhile to the table.

The Museum’s first task under this new partnership will be to review the current position worldwide in relation to the collection, cataloguing, preservation & display of hockey’s heritage with a view to developing a collaborative approach to ensuring that more of our sport’s fascinating heritage is saved and made available to the wider hockey family and beyond. The work, to be led by an academic, will also set the framework for an exciting project to research, collate and publish an authoritative history of hockey ahead of the FIH Centenary in 2024.

Katie Dodd, 15 July 2015

Jean-Pierre Strebel (FIH Foundation Treasurer), Katie Dodd (THM Chair) and Leandro Negre (FIH President) sign the MOU.