First up, thank you to everyone who has signed and shared the petition. The support so far shows something important, people do care about Huntly’s story and want it to be visible in the town where it happened.

On Saturday a couple of representatives from Aberdeenshire Council were in town to discuss the situation. If anyone attended and got more info than me then please add your take. Key points seemed to be that they confirmed that the £20m funding for the new regional Museum of Aberdeenshire in Peterhead comes from Westminster and is tied specifically to that project, so it ‘cannot simply be reallocated elsewhere’. That is code for ‘too hard’.

However, they also made it clear that if the community in Huntly wants a local heritage/museum space, the council would be open to working with us including the possibility of loaning Huntly-related artefacts back to the town, provided any space meets the required museum ‘standards’. Security, climate control etc. I’ve got someone looking into what this entails. It's not a simple as returning stuff to the library, (and in any case we should be more ambitious than that.)

The question now is how we ensure it remains visible and alive in Huntly itself. There will be no council funding in the short term but ironically, councils tend to respond much more positively to movements that feel confident and constructive than to ones that feel angry. A town that looks energised and organised becomes politically difficult to ignore.

What has been really encouraging is the level of interest and pride people have shown in Huntly’s history. That tells us this campaign is about more than artefacts in storage  it’s about the town’s identity and its future.

There will be updates as the conversation develops. In the meantime, please keep sharing the petition and spreading the word. There will also be jobs to do in the near furture so if anyone has some time on their hands then get in touch.

Our town. Our history.

hello@thesignalworks.co.uk