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Category: Key update

  • 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!

  • Colleague tickets for events

    Colleague tickets for events

    We’re about to launch ticket on-sale for our first special event of 2021: 1940s Evening. Tickets will go on-sale to Members from 12 noon on Wed 2 June and discounted tickets for colleagues will be available for purchase from Fri 4 June.

    1940s Evening 2021 is headlined by the D-Darlings and special guests who will entertain visitors with an evening of song, reminiscence and remembrance. We’ve recorded a special video with the D-Day Darlings to celebrate 1940s Weekend and we’ll share this with you all ahead of the public release soon.

    In line with previous years we’ve been able to ring-fence an allocation of discounted tickets for colleagues this event. A minimum of 30 tickets per event night at a 50% discount will be available for colleagues to purchase for 1940s Evening and for other special events that will go on-sale later this year. Due to current visitor capping and the lowering of event capacities, we have had to proportionately reduce the allocation of discounted tickets from the usual 50 to 30. We will 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.)

    For more detail on the ticketing policy, please refer to this document:

    [embeddoc url=”http://pmm.d88.mywebsitetransfer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Colleague-Tickets-for-Events-Policy.-May-21.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]

    Colleague tickets for 1940s Evening will be available to purchase from Fri 4 June. Due to high visitor levels in Admissions for half-term, tickets should be purchased from the Sales & Ticketing office in Canalside.

    As this is the first on-sale of 2021, the Sales & Ticketing team are likely to be busy answering Member enquiries initially. Therefore, we appreciate your patience in accepting a short delay between the Members’ on-sale date and tickets being made available to staff on this occasion. However, please be assured that discounted staff tickets are a separate allocation and cannot be accessed by either BCLM Members or the public.

    A polite reminder to all colleagues that whilst attending the Museum as a visitor, you continue be a representative of BCLM. Therefore, for the comfort of visitors and other colleages, all staff & volunteers should conduct themselves in a positive manner and avoid behaviour that could risk the reputation of the individual colleague, or that of the Museum. Thank you for your understanding.

  • Half-term and weekend parking arrangements – a reminder

    Half-term and weekend parking arrangements – a reminder

    A reminder of the parking arrangements for half term week and all weekends up to and including Sunday 27 June 2021.

    Colleagues working on weekends that fall on or between Saturday 22 May to Sunday 27 June 2021 are instructed to park on Dudley Zoo’s car park where you will also be required to show your BCLM staff or volunteer photo ID card. If you do not have this, please contact People & Culture or your line manager.

    All colleagues and volunteers working week commencing 31 May 2021 (half-term week) will also be required to park on Dudley Zoo’s car park for that week. To minimise the impact on the Zoo’s car park, those colleagues that can work from home are encouraged to do so during half term week.

    It is important that every member of staff has a BCLM staff photo ID card. For any staff and volunteers who do not work during the week, Ben Careless will be in Sunday 30 May during morning briefing for anyone who needs their ID picture taken.

    Below is a map of the Zoo car park for BCLM staff car parking arrangements:

    Also, a reminder that where possible, we would encourage colleagues to work from home in order to minimise journeys to teh Museum and ease the demand on car park spaces.

  • Reopening Week Update

    Although the weather has been less than favourable this week, reopening week has been a success.

    The Museum has received some great press coverage (examples below) and visitors have shown how eager they’ve been to come back to the Museum with some of the wonderful comments we’ve received from them.

    Reopening Day (Mon 17 May)

    On Monday, we hosted a journalist from Heart Radio who filmed the video report below. We think it’s a great testament to the work that staff have done to make the Museum a welcoming and safe place for visitors:

    West Midlands Mayor Andy Street also visit on Monday to celebrate our first day of opening and to advocate for the sector. The visit gained coverage on ITV Central News as well as online:

    #MuseumMoment

    On Tuesday we participated in TikTok’s global #MuseumMoment marathon, which saw 23 museums from across 12 countries – including London’s V&A and New York’s Metropolitan Museum – host a live broadcast from the platform. BCLM participated with a live tour of Old Birmingham Road which saw more 150,000 people tune in to meet our characters and hear about Black Country life from the 1930s. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make this possible and for doing the Museum proud by taking the Black Country story global!

    Visitors Glad To Be Back

    The Museum also featured in Tuesday’s Express & Star with some great testimonials from visitors:

    Visitor Profile & Advance Bookings

    We’ve also been fortunate to welcome back some small education groups this week who’ve chosen to come to the Museum as their first trip since lockdown; and, our outreach talks are continuiung to be popular with schools who cannot yet make a visit. The number of enquiries coming through to the Sales & Ticketing team bodes well for the next academic year as we seek to re-engage schools.

    The weather has literally had a dampening effect on mid-week visitor attendance during our first week of opening. However, bookings for the coming weekend (22/23 May) are very positive with 99% of our target bookings achieved in advance at the time of writing. June half-term ‘Loff Out Loud’ is also selling well in advance with bookings increasing sharply (up by 33%) this week upon news of our reopening.

    Upcoming News

    We will launch our first on-sale of ticketed evening events soon with 1940s Evening as part of 1940s Weekend. We’re planning to go on sale to Members on 2 June and the general public on 9 June. An allocation of staff tickets will be available and we will update colleagues on details of this in a subsequent intranet post. However, most importantly and ahead of on-sale, we’ll share a programme preview with colleagues to let people know about plans for this year’s 1940s Weekend (17/18 Jul) and share some exciting news from the D-Day Darlings.

    Thank you again to everyone for their hard work and commitment in enabling reopening to be such a success. It’s been wonderful to see the Museum come alive again with colleagues and visitors as it fulfils its purpose to engage all generations with living history.

  • Black Country Studies Centre online talks: Festival of Britain

    The Black Country Studies Centre is working with the University of Wolverhampton’s ArtsFest Online to bring you a season of events celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Festival of Britain and its impact here in the Black Country.

    From 17th May, as part of our Discover the Black Country offer here at the Museum, Folkes Park is hosting the Festival of the Black Country – a mini celebration of the 1951 Festival of Britain.

    If you are interested in finding out more about the Festival of Britain and some of its links to the Black Country, the Black Country Studies Centre are hosting a series of online talks, the first two of which are available to book now. The events will be running May-September so do continue to look out for them on our website and social media channels.

    Thursday 13th May, 7pm-8pm

    Revisiting ‘A Tonic to the Nation’ – Dr Jane Webb

    BOOK NOW

    In this first lecture ‘Revisiting a Tonic to the Nation’ Dr Jane Webb will introduce the Festival and set the scene for our summer of celebrations!

    The Festival of Britain was opened to the public 70 years ago. Set in a landscape reverberating with post-war economic and social uncertainties, the event (scheduled from May to September of 1951) was intended to be a tonic to aid the nation’s recovery. This talk provides an introduction to the London site of the Festival of Britain and will explore the intentions of its organisers, a description of the South Bank exhibition and other venues in the capital, and the design language chosen for the Festival.

    Monday 17th May, 5:30pm-6:30pm

    Abram Games and the 1951 Festival of Britain – Naomi Games

    BOOK NOW

    On the 70th Anniversary of the Festival of Britain, Naomi Games will talk about the career of her father, renowned graphic designer Abram Games.

    Abram Games won the competitions to design an emblem for the Festival and the Festival stamp. Naomi will give a personal view of her father’s working process, you will see his progressive designs alongside other items he created for the Festival, as well as cartoons and curiosities.

    Post image courtesy of the Estate of Abram Games

  • BCLM Vaccination Centre: An Update & Thank You

    The Black Country and West Birmingham vaccination programme is now preparing to move into its second phase.

    As a result, some sites have stopped offering first doses and will move out of the vaccination programme after giving their final second dose jabs later this year. These will be 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.

    BCLM – the area’s first large vaccination centre – will continue to offer second doses to all those who received their first dose at the site, but is no longer offering first doses. Anyone who has had their first dose at the Museum will still be able to get their second dose here.

    The Museum Vaccination Centre will run until late June.

    Some GP sites have taken the same decision so that they can reopen other key services. To balance this, more local pharmacies will begin offering the jab, and details of these will be available on the national NHS booking service so people can find their nearest location when booking their vaccination appointment.

    Sally Roberts, Chief Nursing Officer for Black Country and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group and senior responsible officer for the vaccination programme, said: “I want to say a huge thank you to all those working and volunteering at our vaccination sites for making it possible for us to protect so many people in our region in such an incredibly short space of time – with 90% of people aged 45 and over now having had their first dose.

    “Now that we are moving toward younger patient groups, it makes sense that GP practices should – where possible – return their focus to providing GP services while our large vaccination sites and local pharmacies retain the capacity to keep vaccinating.

    “The impact of the vaccination programme and the COVID-safe measures we have all been following means the Black Country Living Museum can look forward to opening its doors to the public again. The importance of the Museum’s role as our very first, accessible and highly visible large vaccination site, can’t be overstated. I want to thank them for their support and wish them the very best with their reopening.”

    Andrew Lovett has said of the Vaccination Centre: “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. Like many others in the area, I received my first vaccination at the Museum and I’m delighted we’ve had the opportunity to support take-up of the vaccine.

    “As a museum, we commemorate and celebrate the stories of people who have made history. Therefore, I’d like to extend my thanks to all NHS staff, volunteers, and BCLM colleagues who’ve worked so hard to make the vaccination centre a success. Everyone involved has truly helped to make history in their efforts to protect the health of our community.”

    As a general reminder, vaccination is currently available to all those aged 40 and over, health and social care workers and carers, and anyone with a long-term health condition, all of whom have been directly invited to receive their vaccine by the NHS. Anyone who has previously declined but changed their mind will always be welcome to come forward when ready – simply speak to your GP or visit nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination.

  • Action for Happiness: Meaningful May

    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 “Meaningful May”. This is all about reflecting on what gives our life meaning. Being a part of something bigger than ourselves and focusing on things that we value is key to our wellbeing. 

    Take daily actions, using their calendar below, to reflect on what you care about and what adds value to your life.

    (Click to open a larger version)

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