By Vicki Stanley, co-Director of Development, Black Country Living Museum
The Black Country Living Museum is not a typical museum. We’re a place of stories, a place that brings the Black Country to life.
What makes us unique is that you can see what it’s like to live and work in one of the first industrial landscapes in the UK. You can talk to our historic characters. You can be in the shop, have a pint in the pub, get fish and chips, watch a demonstration of chain-making, play street games. You’re an active participant in living history.
The Wolfson Foundation first funded the Museum in 1986. Over the years we have received several grants, both from the Foundation directly, and through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) / Wolfson Fund, which supports national and regional museums to improve the quality of displays, enhance exhibition spaces and public access, and increase awareness of their collections.
Revitalising the museum
The investment we’ve had has helped us to revitalise areas of the museum.
The first project I was involved with in 2013 helped us to upgrade the exhibition in our Rolfe Street entrance building. We had an outdated graphic that wasn’t in keeping with the time period or experience on-site. The DCMS/ Wolfson Fund helped us replace those panels with beautiful images of industry, people’s lives, and the stories we wanted to tell. We also created a new film which sets the scene for visitors with our brilliant historic characters talking about what the Black Country is.
Thanks to the DCMS / Wolfson Fund, we’ve also been able to undertake a project to regenerate the Racecourse Colliery, which is one of the first things visitors see.
STEAM learning in action at the Museum’s Racecourse Colliery
The grant enabled us to bring the Colliery to life: we connected the steam winding engine to the pit head frame so that the cage can be lowered into the mine, and also restored the tub tramway that would have carried coal away from the shaft. This work means that, visitors can see how the mine would have worked and watch our pit pony, Charlie, in action, carrying coal along the track.
By taking electricity to the area, we now have lighting and audio visual interpretation. Visitors can hear the songs and conversations of the miners in the hovel. Far more visitors explore that area now.
Forging Ahead
The Wolfson Foundation are now supporting our Forging Ahead project to build a historic town from the 1940s–1960s. As I look out of my office window, I can see it being built – a library, shops, an NHS clinic and a range of industries like brickmaking and aluminum founding.
Construction of the Elephant & Castle pub, which will be the first historic building to open as part of the Forging Ahead development
We’re also building a new visitor centre that will allow us to welcome up to 5,000 visitors a day. We’re aiming for 500,000 visitors a year by 2026.
When the visitor centre opens, work will start to transform the current Rolfe Street entrance building into a learning centre for schools.
Living memories
What’s really exciting for me is that the Forging Ahead project is within living memory, so we’re able to collect stories and memories from people right now. We’re also able to talk about the changing demography of the area at that time, as people came from all over the world to work and live in the Black Country. Sharing these stories enables us to reflect the diversity of our local community and connect people to their history.
The Forging Ahead project is needed more than ever as we recover from the effects of Covid-19. It will create jobs, bring more visitors to the area and provide learning opportunities across the generations.
While there have been some delays due to the pandemic, we are hoping to open the visitor centre in summer 2022, with the historic development to follow in 2023.
Overall, the support we’ve had has allowed us to make incremental developments to the Museum, which means there are new things for people to see. Since 2014, we’ve seen a huge increase in visitors – from around 240,000 that year, to 360,000 in 2019.
For us, the process of working with the Wolfson Foundation over the years has been really important. Because of their help and support, it feels like we’re trying to achieve something together.
Vicki Stanley is co-Director of Development at the Black Country Living Museum.
The Black Country Living Museum recently received £250,000 under our museums and galleries funding programme and the DCMS / Wolfson Fund 2018 – 20.
