The Prime Minister has announced a second national lockdown commencing Thursday 5th November, requiring the Museum to close temporarily to visitors.
The Museum’s Leadership and Management teams are meeting early w/c 2 Nov to understand and interpret the restrictions and formulate plans for the coming weeks.
We will communicate with you all about how we will proceed as soon as possible.
Staff who were expecting to be at the Museum between Monday 2 and Wednesday 4 Nov can still be on-site as planned. Please do contact your line manager if you have any questions ahead of a further Museum update.
If you would like to purchase staff tickets for An Enchanted Christmas, please see the below information about how to purchase.
Tickets will be available for this event from Thursday 22nd October. You will need to go to the Admissions desk between 9am – 9:30am on weekdays that the Museum is open, or purchase by phone 10am – 4pm each day 0121 520 8054. Please note that no tickets will be available for purchase at the weekends due to the allocation being handled by S&T.
Staff will receive 50% discount off the price of each event ticket.
Each member of staff may purchase up to four tickets (of any combination) per event (not per day) at the discounted rate, and may purchase a maximum of two additional tickets at the standard rate.
Staff are required to provide their name, home address and contact details to purchase tickets, as is standard of any customer. On the date of the event, any visitors holding staff tickets (including staff members themselves) must join the normal admissions queue for that event. Staff tickets do not provide fast track entry.
Staff cannot purchase tickets on the behalf of another staff member.
Staff tickets cannot be held or reserved without payment.
The Collections Care and Management Team are once again accepting donations of objects to the collection. During Covid-19 special measures have been put in place to ensure the safety of both donors and museum staff.
As such, the following process for collecting of objects will be followed.
Donating an Object to Black Country Living Museum
Before bringing or sending an object to the museum the potential donor will first need to contact the Collections Care and Management Team via one of the following ways:
Post: Collections Care and Management Team, Black Country Living Museum, Tipton, Dudley DY1 4SQ
Phone: 0121 557 9643 – Extension 3
If anyone is approached by a member of the public with an offer of an object for the collection, can they please guide them to the collections page on the website which gives all of the information needed to be able to make an offer.
Unfortunately, any items that have not been approved via email or letter by a member of the Collections Care and Management team will not be accepted.
A list of the objects we are and are not currently collecting can be found at below for guidance, as can two workflows setting out the process of managing offers.
BCLM’s application to the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) has been successful and a grant of £2.56m has been awarded to further help the Museum face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.
This financial support, administered by Arts Council England (ACE), will help to safeguard the Museum during these most challenging of times. Since reopening in August, following five months of closure due to Covid-19 restrictions, we’ve been operating with strictly capped visitor attendance – resulting in audiences at less than half of the level seen in previous years. A lack of demand from educational groups due to Covid has also contributed to significantly lower attendance – particularly during term time week days.
As an independent charity which receives 94 per cent of its income from visitors, the temporary closure and reduced visitor numbers have had a serious impact on the Museum’s short and medium-term financial position. Therefore, support from the Culture Recovery Fund will play a vital role in helping us to remain operational and able to serve our community; and while this is obviously fantastic news, we will still need to evolve to meet the challenges ahead.
Watch a short video statement from Andrew below, or you can directly link to the video on our YouTube Channel here:
Commenting on the award, Andrew said, “We’re incredibly grateful for the support given to the Museum, ultimately by the people of the UK, as a result of our successful application to the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund. Prior to the pandemic, BCLM was justly proud of its contribution as an independent heritage business to the region’s identity and economy. These funds will help us to adapt to survive in the short term, so that we can thrive and grow with our community in the long term.
“Prior to COVID-19 this Museum was enormously successful. This critical funding provides the means to be successful once more. As Chair of the Association of Independent Museums, I also recognise and welcome the positive impact of the Culture Recovery Fund for hundreds of museums across England and the value attached to them by millions of visitors.”
Lowell Williams, Chair of the Board of Trustees, said, “This decision is a massive vote of confidence in the Museum. It reflects our value to people and the strength and optimism of the organisation.”
The full public press release can also viewed on our website’s News Page here.
Other Midlands organisations including Ironbridge Museums, Birmingham Hippodrome, THSH, and Birmingham Museums Trust have been awarded grants from the Culture Recovery Fund. Given the support for the region’s cultural sector, it’s unsurprising that there’s a great deal of local media interest. Therefore, it’s likely that the Museum will feature online and in local TV news in the coming days, so please keep a look out. We’ll also post updates on this to the intranet.
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Arts Council England (ACE) have this week announced details of organisations who have received support from the Culture Recovery Fund after making successful applications to Round 1 of the funding package.
Round 1 of the CRF pertains to organisations who have applied for grant funding from ACE of amounts under £1 million. Awards have thus far been made to 1,385 cultural organisations and totalling £257 million of support from a fund worth £1.57 billion.
A number of our peers from the independent museum sector have successfully obtained funding having applied for Round 1 grants, including Beamish Museum (£970k) and the Charles Dickens Museum (£222k).
Announcements of the funding round for which BCLM applied (ACE grants of more than £1 million) have yet to be made, but we expect to receive news about our application from Fri 23 Oct onwards. As soon as we have news, we will inform colleagues – so please keep a look out for an intranet update.
Andrew, as Chair of the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), has recorded a statement supporting news of the Round 1 awards and highlighting the positive impact this funding will have in helping independent museums to remain viable and able to serve their communities.
The challenges presented by Covid-19 means we’ve had to think differently about our visitor offer for Christmas 2020.
Learning from how we implemented the ‘Unlocking the Black Country’ programme and insights from visitor feedback have helped us to design a new Christmas programme that can operate in a Covid-safe way and which will appeal to our audience.
Therefore, we wanted to share news of the Christmas programme with you – one that we hope will both excite visitors and be rewarding for staff to deliver.
The Rule of Six and protocols around social distancing means that we won’t be running Santa Hunts this year. We know how enjoyable Santa Hunts can be for both staff and visitors, and that this will be disappointing news for some people. We’ve also decided not to hold our Christmas Nights event. This latter decision was made based on visitor feedback which showed a greater demand and level of comfort in visiting the Museum during the daytime and when people feel they can spend quality time together as a family.
An Enchanted Christmas
Therefore, we’ve developed a completely new pre-ticketed event aimed at families and those visitors who consider themselves young at heart.
On Sat 12, Sun 13, Sat 19 and Sun 20 December between 10.00am-8.00pm, the Museum will be the backdrop to ‘An Enchanted Christmas’.
With a storyline based on ‘The Nutcracker’ BCLM will be transformed into a festive land where visitors will be asked to join the Nutcracker Army to thwart the plans of the Rat King and his band of rogues and, thus, save Christmas!
This is a new type of event for us, but it’s also one that we think will stand out versus events at other venues who may be taking a more ‘traditional’ approach this year. By differentiating our offer we intend to attract new audiences to the Museum.
Unwrapping Christmas
Visitor response to the Enchanted Christmas concept was extremely positive in market research, but we also want to make sure we’re serving the full spectrum of our audiences – particularly those for whom a visit to the Museum is about stepping back in time. Therefore, on December weekdays, and then on Sat 5/Sun 6 December, and from Mon 21 – Thu 24 December the visitor programme will be ‘Unwrapping Christmas’. This programme will adapt the zoned approach that was developed for Unlocking the Black Country and tell the story of Black Country Christmases through time, from the 1800s to the 1960s.
We’ll share further details about the specific elements of the visitor offer in due course, but we hope this update gives you a flavour of the Christmas programme in the meantime.
As part of a routine security update, the password to access the intranet outside of Museum computer network has been updated.
If you wish to access the intranet when you’re outside of the Museum, or outside of the Museum IT network (e.g. via mobile device), you will need to enter a new password to log on.
This new password is: sweetshop (one word, all lower case).
The new password will also be shared with colleagues via a PlanDay update.
In light of the latest government update on COVID-19 controls, we thought it useful to make clear how the “Rule of 6” and Track and Trace changes impact the Museum and to take the opportunity to remind everyone of our COVID-safe measures and related behaviour.
All colleagues must maintain a social distance of at least 2 metres from each other and all visitors in the Museum. Distancing on-site also applies to colleagues or visitors who are in the same household or ‘bubble’ as you. Other visitors to the Museum will not know your personal circumstances and might assume that you are not observing social distancing.
Regular hand washing (or sanitisation where washing is not possible) should always take place after arrival at work, before and after a break, before and after handling a face covering or shield, and before you leave to go home.
Separate break areas and toilets have been allocated depending on which zone/area you work in for each day. This has been done to ensure that social distancing can be maintained and to assist Track and Trace if we need to inform them of a positive case. You MUST stick to your allocated area for the day – if you aren’t sure where you should be going please ask the Duty Manager at morning briefing.
All colleagues are now required to clock in to ensure we can track who has been to the Museum each day, should we need to report a positive case for Track and Trace purposes.
We must all lead by example and observe the distancing measures introduced, when open to the public. Keep left, follow all one-way routes, enter and exit buildings or areas as directed by the signage or symbols and help ensure that building capacities are observed.
Where you have a concern that visitors might be gathering outside of the “rule of 6”, i.e. a larger group has formed and appears to know each other or be moving around site together, please make the Duty Manager aware for them to approach the group appropriately.
Where visitors are naturally getting a little close, please feel free to politely remind visitors to keep their distance from others not in their household. Please present this as a general reminder.
Please dispose of paper towels in a bin. Sanitary bins are only for used anti-bacterial wipes and sanitary products, rather than general waste.
All cutlery and crockery must be washed, dried and put away after use. All rubbish must be placed in the bins provided. We would like to make microwaves available for use again, but this will only be possible if we can maintain a high standard of cleanliness in our kitchen areas.
We thank everyone who is making an effort to keep the Museum a safe place to work and visit and we hope that everyone can continue to make this the case in such challenging times. Checks will continue to be made throughout each day and further action will be taken where breaches in safe behaviours are identified.
We’re excited to share the news that the Museum will feature in a brand new series to be broadcast on ITV1 this Sunday (13 Sep).
‘All Around Britain’ is a new show hosted by Ranvir Singh and Alex Beresford (of Good Morning Britain). Each week, they will take viewers on a tour around Britain to some of the nation’s most famous attractions and landmarks.
BCLM is the host location for episode 2 of ‘All Around Britain’. The programme will feature the presenters taking on a number of different challenges helped by BCLM staff – including canal art painting and chain making.
We’re delighted that ITV have chosen us as one of the key locations as it’s an opportunity to show a national audience what BCLM is all about and to celebrate the history and culture of the Black Country.
The episode is scheduled for broadcast at 11.20am-12.20pm on Sun 13 Sep on ITV1. If you can’t tune in then, the show will be available on catch up on the ITV Hub.
A huge thank you to everyone who helped to make the filming possible and especially to those who contributed on-camera. ITV are apparently delighted with the results, so we can’t wait to see the show when it’s broadcast.
Thank you all for your hard work and support in advance of our re-opening at the beginning of August and your enthusiasm for the programme and our COVID safety measures now we have visitors back onsite.
The feedback from our visitors has been overwhelmingly positive and many have commented that they have experienced parts of the Museum that they haven’t before, found our offer to be more engaging, our food and drink offer to be more plentiful and that the Museum has felt safe and well controlled.
Despite this wonderful feedback, we do need to recognise that closure due to COVID-19 meant we lost 150,000 visitors and C.£3m in revenue. BCLM is 94% funded by our visitors so with a continued reduction in attendance due to social distancing measures, the uncertainty around future visitors, especially schools and groups this Autumn and Winter, or our ability to hold events will continue to have a financial impact on the Museum
Our award from the Arts Council Emergency Response Fund was gratefully received in June and this week we have submit a bid for further support from the Government Cultural Recovery fund. We will receive the outcome of our bid at the end of October.
With these factors in mind, we have taken the difficult decision to reduce the Museum’s opening hours, effective from 7th September 2020 as follows:
W/C 7th September: Open Thursday 10th – Sunday 13th, 10am – 4pm. (Wednesday 9th closed for a private booking)
W/C 14th September –25th October: Open Wednesday – Sunday, 10am – 4pm.
W/C 26th October – 1st November – October Half Term: Open Monday – Sunday, 10am – 4pm.
You will see that we are effectively bringing forward our winter opening hours to reflect our lower visitor numbers.
Those colleagues whose contracted days or hours will reduce as a result of the above, will have the difference “topped” up to 80% of their usual pay using the Government’s Job Retention flexible furlough scheme until the end of October when the scheme comes to an end and when we would usually expect to move to our low season hours.
If you have any queries about your personal situation or work patterns then please speak to you line managers who will work through these with you with support from People & Culture if required.
I appreciate this will be disappointing but not unexpected news and we mustn’t let it dampen our spirits. Let’s continue to deliver a fantastic visitor experience and maintain momentum and energy as we move into Autumn.
