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Category: General News

  • 125k jabs delivered by the BCLM Vaccination Centre

    Black Country & West Birmingham NHS CCG have shared the amazing news that 125,000 jabs were delivered to the local community across Jan-Jun during the opeation of the Vaccination Centre at the Museum.

    The impressive result couldn’t have been achieved with the hard work of NHS staff and volunteers as well as the support of the BCLM colleagues. Thank you to everyone.

    For the full story, see our news page

  • Colleague Tickets: Peaky Blinders Nights

    We’re about to launch the ticket on-sale for our much-anticipated Peaky Blinders Nights. Tickets will go on-sale to Members from 12 noon on Wed 30 June and discounted tickets for colleagues will be available for purchase from Fri 2 July.

    “Grab your flatcap and don your finest threads for a night of fun and revelry as you step into the smoky underworld of the 1920s. Explore the Museum’s streets and alleys and hear of tales about Birmingham’s most notorious gangs. Enjoy the roaring nightlife of the interwar years with music and entertainment around every corner.“

    In line with previous years we’ve been able to ring-fence an allocation of discounted tickets for colleagues. A minimum of 30 tickets per event night at a 50% discount will be available for colleagues to purchase for Peaky Blinders Nights. As per 1940s Evening we are currently able to allocate a total of 30 staff tickets per night, and may be in a position to review the number of discounted colleague tickets that we can make available should we be able to increase the overall capacity for events as part of the Government’s future review of the Roadmap.

    Colleagues are able to purchase up to four discounted tickets and two additional full price tickets per event (subject to ticket availability.) To purchase staff tickets please speak to the Sales and Ticketing team in the Canalside offices from Fri 2 July.

    For more information on our colleague ticket policy please refer to our guiding document here.

  • The Vaccination Centre at BCLM

    On Sunday 27 June the NHS will deliver their final vaccination at the Museum and then during July will be decommissioning from Halls 1 and 2. As we mentioned in May, the NHS has moved to the second phase of vaccination programme and some sites, such as BCLM, have been replaced with new locations at community pharmacies and more capacity at existing sites. This second phase is part of the plan to enable the NHS to begin restoring services to pre-COVID levels while keeping vaccination capacity the same.

    We’re incredibly proud to have played our part in supporting the NHS to inoculate our local community against COVID by hosting the Vaccination Centre at BCLM and a huge thank you to all the teams who have support them during their time at the Museum and for everyone’s patience as we have worked alongside each other.

    From Monday 28 June Duty Manager hours will revert to the Museum’s office hours, 8am to 6pm (including the car park being locked at 6pm) and staff access to the Museum outside of these hours must be agreed in advance.

    While we remain in Step 3 anyone who has been accessing or leaving the Museum, at the beginning or end of their shift, via the brown gates should continue to do so to avoid crowding in Admissions. Morning briefings and break spaces remain unchanged.

  • Museums & Heritage Awards Ceremony on 1 July, 6pm

    As you may know, Black Country Living Museum’s TikTok account has been nominated for best ‘use of social media’ at the Museums & Heritage Awards 2021! The awards celebrate the very best within museums, galleries and heritage visitor attractions and while normally we would be attending a glitzy awards ceremony in London, this year that is not possible. The M&H Awards will therefore be virtual, and we would like to give staff the opportunity to come together at the museum to watch (and possibly celebrate) during the live stream.

    We propose to stream the event in the Folke’s Park marquee on Thurs 1 July between 6-9pm (the ceremony starts at 7pm). If you wish to attend, please RSVP by Friday 25th by email [email protected]. The marquee does have a maximum capacity so this will be on a first-come-first-served basis.

    You can see who else we’re up against here: https://awards.museumsandheritage.com/shortlist-2021/.

    Please note, if you cannot attend but wish to book a ticket to the ceremony, you can do so here.

    See you soon and fingers crossed!

  • Black Country Studies Centre online talks: The Nostalgia Series

    Black Country Studies Centre is hosting a series of free online talks discussing topics around the theme of Nostalgia. The latest talk, “Nostalgia and Oral History”, is now available to book via our website.

    Date: Thursday 24th June, 2021

    Time: 7pm – 8:30pm

    Venue: Zoom

    Introducing the Nostalgia Series

    Nostalgia is a contentious issue. Whilst for some it is a harmless, helpful, rose-tinted view of the past, it has also been viewed critically, as a form of regressive, reactionary and sentimental escapism. Yet there is a steadily increasing body of work that reassesses nostalgia in a more positive, active and empowering light. Through this research network series, we seek to gain a greater understanding of nostalgia, and its impact on museums, regional and local history, lifelong learning and communities.

    The Talk: Nostalgia and Oral History

    At a History Workshop conference held in Leeds, in 1985, Malcolm Chase declared that ‘[o]f all the ways of using history, nostalgia is the most general, looks the most innocent, and is perhaps the most dangerous’ (Chase, 1985, p. 26) . In the C17th nostalgia was considered to be ‘a disorder: a psychic and bodily languish leading to emotional outbursts, melancholy, depression and suicide attempts’ (Hoffer, 1688). In subsequent years both historians and social scientists were warned against the inevitable distortion and pervasive nature of nostalgia – ‘history as loss’ – mourning for a previous era (Tosh, 2015, p. 15).

    Nevertheless, historians and sociologists who utilise oral interviews within their research may well conclude that nostalgic reminiscences can enhance our understanding of the past and the present. Researching into the lives of post-war teenagers means an inevitable encounter with memories/nostalgia, but this can be harnessed to navigate the fluctuating connections between past and present. It is interesting to discern how references to images, diaries, fashion, and music, within interviews, can help respondents to recall incidents, emotions, and occasions that had long been forgotten, revealing fresh insights and helping the narrator (and the historian) to reconstruct autobiographical accounts of self, identity, and belonging.

    Despite warnings of the adverse effects of nostalgia on oral testimony, many oral historians see nostalgia as a means of understanding change and mediating memories. Using interviews with respondents who grew up in the post-war Black Country, this talk will examine the relationship between nostalgia and memory and the utility of nostalgia in mnemonic recall. Images, music, advertisements, memoirs, diaries, social media and a plethora of other aides-memoire can stimulate the senses and contribute to the process of remembering. These, in turn, can contribute to our understanding of the past.

    The event will be held on Zoom and a link will be sent shortly beforehand. It is free to attend.

  • Birmingham Clean Air Zone

    To encourage cleaner, greener and more sustainable methods of transportation, on 1 June 2021 Birmingham launched its Clean Air Zone.

    It operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and has been introduced to help reduce traffic and pollution levels in central Birmingham. Subsequently, a charge is now applied daily for older non-compliant vehicles driving into the Clean Air Zone – the area includes all the roads within the A4540 Middleway Ring Road, but not the Middleway itself.  

    Whilst the SEAT Pool Car is exempt from the new charge, the museum’s older fleet of vehicles do not qualify for an exemption and must not be driven into the Clean Air Zone without prior authorisation. 

    Where practical, public transport should always be prioritised as the preferred method for undertaking a journey. But if you do have to use your own vehicle whilst on Museum business, charges associated with entering the Clean Air Zone will not normally be reimbursed, unless the final destination is within the Clean Air Zone and prior approval has been obtained from your line manager. 

    For more information on the Clean Air Zone please visit: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/20076/pollution/1763/a_clean_air_zone_for_birmingham

  • 1940s Weekend Promo Film – An Exclusive Sneak Preview

    We wanted to share an exclusive preview of our promiotional film for 1940s Weekend ahead of the public premiere on our YouTube channel at 7.15pm on Wed 9 Jun.

    This video is a special collaboration with the D-Day Darlings who will be peforming across 1940s Weekend and headline our special VE-Day-themed celebration during 1940s Evening.

    Tickets for 1940s Evening go on-sale to the general public tomorrow (9 Jun) and the video will support sales for the Weekend as a whole over the coming weeks.

    This video wouldn’t have been possible without the support of colleagues from across the Museum. Sincere thanks to everyone who agreed to appear in the video, but also a special thank you to colleagues in the Transport team, Engagement Ops team, Duty Managers, Development team and Audiences & Communications who worked hard behind the scenes to make things work on the day.

    We hope you enjoy the film. You can see it here. If the video takes a little while to download, please refresh your browser and don’t forget to press the play button at the bottom of the screen as the film won’t play automatically.

    If you’d like to join the watch party on our YouTube premiere and put a question to the D-Day Darlings as part of the chat, log-in via this link from 7.15 pm on Wed 9 Jun.

    This preview is exclusively for Museum colleagues ahead of the premiere. Please do not share publicly on any channel.

  • Action for Happiness: Joyful June

    Action for Happiness is a movement of people committed to building a happier and more caring society.

    Each month they release a “Monthly Action Calendar” which are packed with actions you can take to help create a happier and kinder world.

    This month’s theme is “Joyful June”. This is all about finding the joy in life, even when things are difficult.

    Let’s all take daily actions, using their calendar below or the Action for Happiness App, to train our brains to find the joy.

    Find out more about Action for Happiness and view their previous monthly action calendars.

  • Loff Out Loud in the News

    As we enter the final weekend of Loff Out Loud, we wanted to share a short article from the Express & Star.

    The images speak for themselves in showing the wonderful costumes and characters that have made half-term so popular with visitors.

    Article here.

    Thank you to everyone for helping to deliver such a great visitor experience!

  • Million Follower Milestone on TikTok

    As many of you may already know, our BCLM TikTok account hit an important milestone on Monday – a million followers!

    This amount of followers is of course impressive enough, but it’s the impact of this following and what it can mean for us going forward that really matters.

    The account has had a significant impact on our ability to reach younger and more diverse audiences – we’ve seen a 30% uplift of visits to the website from 18-24 years olds compared to the previous period where we weren’t active on TikTok. On top of this (as I’m sure many of you already know from direct experience) this has started to trickle down to on-site visits. We (roughly) estimate that about 25% of visits are because of the channel and I’ve personally spoken to multiple parents whose children have begged them to visit. And, if that wasn’t enough, in the last six months of 2020, we were the most engaged with museum media channel in the entire world. That’s more engagement than the MET, the British Museum, the Smithsonian, the V&A, and any other museum you can think of.

    Of course, none of this would be possible without our wonderful staff. It is your open-mindedness to new challenges and your drive to tell the stories of the past that really makes the magic happen – TikTok has simply shone a light on what was here all along. You should all be incredibly proud!