The Lightbox Director, Marilyn Scott, writes about what she has been up to in the last month.

I have been travelling a lot recently to some very interesting places. Two weeks ago I visited the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. It really showed what you can do with a very large budget. The museum is funded by the International Olympic Committee and traces the history of the modern Olympics. It is situated beside Lake Geneva in a stunning setting where from every window you can see the mountains and the lake. The whole museum makes use of the very extensive archive of film and photography which brings the Olympics to life. There are 150 AV screens in the museum and most have soundtrack so it is a very lively and noisy experience but the design is such that the sound does not bleed form one area to another. A truly impressive creation.

I also travelled to Slovenia to give leadership training to young Slovenian and Croatian curators in the beautiful setting of a mountain lodge near Ljubljana. Their enthusiasm in the face of severe budget cuts and job losses was really inspirational. The issues we face are universal, particularly throughout Europe, but they were very determined to stay in the museum and gallery profession and were optimistic about the future and the value of their work in their own communities, which was heartening. I returned thinking that maybe our own situation is not quite so bad after all and how lucky we are to have such great support for The Lightbox, particularly from our volunteers – the Slovenian curators were very envious when I told them how great our volunteers were!

And of course, all that leaves is for us to say Merry Christmas and a Happy New year! We hope you all have a lovely time and look forward to seeing you in the new year with our packed programmed of events and exhibitions. Keep an eye on our exhibitions page to find out what's coming up. We are open over the Christmas period, but if you are visting then please take a moment to check our Christmas opening times on the Plan Your Visit page of our website.

Image credit: The Lightbox from the canal © Ian Rudgewick Brown.