With great feedback from our visitors, some lovely examples of community engagement during our call-outs for stories, record-breaking attendance, and giving the Museum the opportunity to fulfil more of its potential with Forging Ahead, 2018 has been a remarkably good year for BCLM. This kind of performance doesn’t happen by accident, and I sometimes talk about achieving our purpose on purpose. That purpose is about being a great Museum + Charity + Visitor Attraction. All in One. It is a balancing act that requires customer focus and effective collaboration, and one which you are delivering. We are one team, working together.
So, as we approach the end of the year, I want to thank and pay tribute to you and the part you have played in our success this year. It makes me very proud to have the privilege of leading the Museum, and I look forward to 2019, working with you and achieving even greater things for our audiences and the Black Country. Thank you.
Happy Christmas & Prosperous New Year.
Andrew
This week we say goodbye to two members of staff.
Josefine Frank, Assistant Head of Learning, will be leaving the Museum to take up a role in Germany and Tessa Lovell, Head of Visitor Engagement, left the Museum this week to pursue new opportunities.
Thank you to Josefine and Tessa for their work and commitment. We wish them every success in the future.
Any interim arrangements felt to be necessary will be put in place and communicated in the coming weeks.
Please click on the link below to read the November report.
On Monday 3 December, after a nineteen month Development Phase, we submitted, as planned, our Round Two application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. At £9.4m, it is the same level when we received, against huge odds, our Round One pass in April 2017. It represents the largest, but not the only remaining piece of the funding jigsaw, to get us to £22.2m and a fully-funded project.
Work will carry on until March next year, when we expect to have a decision from the HLF on our application. In the meantime, and at this hugely important milestone, I want to thank you all for the work you have done and the enthusiasm you have shown, to get us to this very positive position, and the opportunity you have helped create for the future of this museum. It is a tremendous application and project and therefore, I am extremely optimistic about the outcome.
On Wed 21 Nov the Black Country Studies Centre launched. This new education partnership between the University of Wolverhampton and the Museum will provide new learning opportunities for communities across the Black Country. The partnerships’s aim is to deliver learning outcomes that will help local people to develop their employability skills, raise aspirations and encourage community cohesion.
The Centre will offer guest talks, taster courses, student placements and research projects to create unique learning opportunities for the region and which build on the history of the Black Country.
Commenting on BCSC, Andrew Lovett said, “The Black Country Studies Centre has been created to formalise our current relationship with the University. Together and through a programme of inspirational activities we will continue to explore the history of the area and how that history informs our understanding of ourselves and our communities.”
Click here to find out more about Black Country Studies Centre.
Wednesday’s launch evening also included Snidge Scrumpin’ – an experiment to map smell and memory in the Black Country. Run by the University of Wolverhampton as part of the Being Human Festival 2018, the experiment exposed participants to a range of different smells and asked them about the memories and places they triggered. The results will be published in January and we hope they can input into the Museum’s interpretation plan for our 1940s-1960s town as part of Forging Ahead.
