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  • BSL Filming Volunteers Needed!

    Would you like to be featured in a new welcome video for the museum? And learn a new language all at the same time?

    On Saturday 1 September, Chantelle our Community Engagement Assistant and Emma, British Sign Language interpreter will be on site filming a welcome video for the deaf community.  Filming will commence at 10am until 12pm with some of our staff to introduce those who will be on the BSL Tours at the Museum.

    Emma is a specialist in British Sign Language and has taught a few of our staff Level 1 & 2 in BSL already. She will be present behind the camera teaching you BSL to ensure you are ready for your close up.

    If you would like to get involved and want learn some basic British sign Language feel free to email [email protected] or call on ext 209.

  • Directors’ Bi-Monthly Report

    Please note, the director’s bi-monthly report is now in the documents section of the intranet.

  • Ordering stationery and office supplies

    Quality Business Supplies is our preferred supplier for all of the Museum’s purchases of stationery and office supplies.

    To enable the Museum to fully track all orders, purchases should only be made using the Quality Business Supplies online ordering system and not via the telephone.

    The HR/Administration team will ensure that the stationery cupboard is appropriately stocked. If an item is low in stock, please inform the team so they can ensure it is appropriately restocked.

    If you have a purchase requirement for stationery and/or office supplies which is specific for your department, Ben Careless in the HR/Administration team is the dedicated individual to place purchases using the online ordering system. (In his absence, Jordan, Dawn and Michaela can also place orders on the online ordering system). For such purchases, you will be required to raise the necessary Purchase Order on Opera.

    With Quality Business Supplies, we have a contract arrangement with them which gives us added discount on certain items. Therefore it is important that purchases are made from items on the Contract List. The Contract List can be found in the internet in the “How tos and Guides” folder under Documents.

    If you believe that an item which we order regularly is missing from the Contract List, please contact Craig Edmondson.

  • BCLM: Forging Ahead – Lea Road Infant Welfare Centre

    To coincide with the seventieth anniversary of the NHS, we’ll be launching our public call-out for memories of Lea Road Infant Welfare Centre tomorrow (18th July). Do you have any personal stories or family connection with the Centre? Were you taken as a child and dosed with cod liver oil? If you do have anything you would like to share to help in our re-creation of the shop, please pop in and see the Collections team in the Rolfe Street offices.

    A bit about Lea Road Infant Welfare Centre

    This centre was opened in 1928 to serve the Penn Fields area of Wolverhampton. It was designed as somewhere for new and expectant mothers to meet, learn about their and their babies’ health, and have their children fed, weighed and vaccinated. Twenty years later, the Centre became part of the new National Health Service. Visitors to Lea Road in the 1950s and 1960s would have found a busy environment, overseen by staff and volunteers. The main hall was a waiting room, but doubled up as a venue for ante-natal and “mothercraft” classes, baby clothes sales, and as a social gathering for new mothers – always with a fresh cup of tea in hand. Worried new mums could receive advice on anything from birthing anaesthetics to family planning – though this was strictly for married women only. Babies were weighed and checked regularly, and vaccinated against a range of diseases. Outbreaks of measles, smallpox and polio still occurred from time to time, and diphtheria was a particular Black Country problem: at points during the 1950s, for example, Coseley was responsible for a third of all cases nationally! Most memorably, the centres also distributed welfare foods: vitamins, bottles of thick, sticky orange juice, tins of National Dried Milk, and the hated cod liver oil.

    Why Lea Road?

    We are rebuilding this centre to tell the story of the birth of the NHS; the influx in junior doctors from countries such as India and Pakistan during the 50s & 60s; the lives of young women and children in this period; and also to help in our understanding of public health in the present day.

  • Planned Maintenance Programme – June Update

    Planned Maintenance Programme – June Update

    The latest update on 2018 planned maintenance is now available to view.  Please click below to see the latest progress and planned timings:

    Maintenance Programme Update Jun 18

    Should you have any questions, please get in touch with David Pitt.

  • Annual Report & Accounts year ending 2017

    Please note that the Annual Report & Accounts for year ending 2017 is now available to view in the museum documents.

  • BCLM: Forging Ahead – E. Minett

    We’ll be launching our public call-out for memories of Wednesbury-based E. Minett ladies’ clothes shop and haberdashery next week (commencing 18th June).

    Do you have any personal stories about the place to shop for Wednesbury’s most fashionable ladies in the 1950s? Did you, your family or friends go there to keep up with the latest trends in the 50s? Did you or anyone you know work there? If you do have anything you would like to share to help in our re-creation of the shop, please pop in and see the Collections team in the Rolfe Street offices.

    A bit about E. Minett

    Founded by Edith Dabbs Minett in the 1920s, E. Minett was known as the place to go for the best dressed ladies of Wednesbury.  Edith started the business in the 1920s in the front room of the family home in Pound Road before opening the shop at 83 Walsall Street.

    Minett’s was a family-run business. Edith’s husband, William, managed the shop’s accounts around the time of the birth of their daughter, Brenda. Brenda started working at the shop as a young girl, earning three pence a week by dusting boxes and assisting with other day-to-day tasks. She started working at Minett’s full-time when she left school and took over with her husband, John Greenhough, and ran the business until it ceased trading in 2006.

    Clothes for the shop were bought on mail order from trade catalogues or from trips to wholesalers in Birmingham.  Brenda prided herself on buying garments in advance for particular customers she had in mind and whom she knew would buy the item as soon as they saw what she had chosen for them.

    The shop operated a ‘20 Week Club’ which allowed customers to pay a 10% deposit for items, reserve them and pay the remainder over a twenty-week period.  The increasing use of this type of credit in the 1950s was popular with British customers, as it made expensive items accessible and contributed to the post-war boom.

    Why E. Minett?

    We will be recreating the shop from 83 Walsall Street, which will be set in the late 1950s, to tell  the story of the post-war revolution in female fashion as well as the changing role of women in society and the 50s economic boom when people ‘never had it so good’.

     

  • Available Desks and Hot Desks

    Desk space is at a premium and with volunteers, consultants and work experience students getting more involved in supporting our activities we have created a calendar to highlight available desk space and allow people to book it. You can access the calendar via the room list.

    You add your desk as available, if you are on holiday or out of the office, by booking an appointment in the calendar with no event title, but your name and the location as the location.

    You can book a desk by accessing the calendar and adding your name as the event title to any desks that are showing. If you only require for part of the day edit the availability by adding a new appointment for the time you require and adding you name and altering the original appointment to exclude that time.

  • Directors’ Bi-Monthly Report

    Directors’ Bi-Monthly Report

    Please note, the director’s bi-monthly report is now in the documents section of the intranet.

  • Launch of New BCLM Visitor Promise

    Last year a group of staff and volunteers from across the Museum came together to discuss how we all – no matter what our role – can make a difference to the experience of our visitors and ensure they are truly at the heart of everything we do.

    Together, the group devised a Visitor Promise which is being launched to all staff & volunteers today, Monday 11 June.

     

    What is it?

    The definition of a promise is ‘a declaration or assurance that one will do something or that a particular thing will happen’. That’s exactly what this is – a promise to our visitors that we will provide an outstanding visitor offer and that we will train and support our staff and volunteers so we can….

    1. Create the right impression
    2. Engage our visitors
    3. Get the basics right
    4. Build relationships
    5. Celebrate our collections and stories

    You can find the full version of our Visitor Promise within the Museum Documents tab above.

     

    What do you need to do?

    Adopt the Visitor Promise and bring it to life in everything you do.

     

    We know that many of you are already excelling in all the areas and we want to share and celebrate that success, so anyone can nominate a fellow staff member of volunteer as a Visitor Promise Champion. You can do this by putting a nomination form in the boxes in the Guide Hut, Doos or Rolfe Street Offices or by emailing [email protected].