Early October, EXARC organised a meeting for the archaeological open-air museums and educational centres in the Netherlands. Nine organisations were present, of which the majority is EXARC member. The bandwidth is very large: where one organisation has an indoor museum as well as an outdoor museum, with 80,000 visitors, the other has only 5,000 visitors a year and only one person for three days a week involved. All of them struggle to get by and for some it is each year a challenge if they open again next year. 

The fifteen people present shared stories about their places, and also about their challenges for the near future. We visited the open-air centre which was our host (in Amersfoort) where we could ask many things about the maintenance of the houses, how they organise volunteers and much more. 

We agreed to keep organising these networking meetings, maybe once a year, because it is important to be able to find each other when there are urgent questions, for example about permits and regulations.