Dec 06 2007
Petition over textile centre draws 2,171 names
From the Daily Echo by Andrew Napier
A CAMPAIGN to save a threatened conservation centre in Winchester is attracting national support.
A petition on the Prime Minister’s website against the closure of the Textile Conservation Centre has garnered 2,171 names.
The petition was sparked by a Daily Echo’s exclusive story last month, since followed up by national newspapers, that Southampton University plans to close the centre in 2009.
The university says the centre, which has around 15 staff and 60 postgraduate students, costs too much money to run.
Campaigners are furious because much of the cost of setting up the TCC in 1998 was paid by charitable trusts.
They say the university lured the then financially sound centre from Hampton Court Palace in London. If the centre is now losing money, that is a result of poor management since its transfer to Winchester.
Jerry Podany, of the Getty Museum in California, wrote to the university vice-chancellor Bill Wakeham, saying the closure is “widely perceived as no less than a betrayal of trust”.
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