The Black Country Living Museum, one of the Midlands’ most popular visitor attractions, which has achieved a world-wide reputation for its work, is to launch an expansion programme designed to move the Museum forward, improve and expand the number and range of exhibits available and increase the number of visitors each year from the current 250,000 to 300,000 over the next five years.
The expansion plans focus on four main areas:
The Living Museum - making more of the existing buildings within the Museum with more costumed characters bringing the story of the Black Country to life, more working demonstrations and more interactive presentations. Boats will move around the canal basin, old vehicles will run around the Museum site and the Newcomen Engine will run regularly.
Old Birmingham Road - a major expansion of the reconstructed canal side village at the heart of the Museum this 1930’s High Street of buildings rescued from the Black Country will include Hobbs fish and chip shop from Dudley, a motorcycle dealers, tobacconists, solicitors and more historic buildings. It will stretch from St James’s school to the Worker’s Institute and public park.
Information and Access - making the Museum’s unique resources of objects, information and knowledge available to a wider audience. A major new exhibition in this building will relate the open air displays to the story of the region, while improved information systems and archive facilities will give students, visitors and researchers access to more information.
Moving the Black Country - new workshops, restoration facilities and period displays will ensure the long term care of our unique collection of cars, motorcycles, trucks, trams and buses while their display and demonstration will highlight the significance of the motor industry to the Black Country and allow visitors to interact more fully with the wide range of vehicles.
The Streets Ahead fundraising campaign has already started, when the Museum stepped in to save the Cradley Heath Workers' Institute. Threatened by plans for a new ring road, the Museum dismantled the Workers Institute, before packing it in boxes and moving this to the Museum’s site in Dudley. Here the building is being rebuilt, brick-by-brick, exactly as it was before.
Due to open in 2008, this building has been supported by a number of gifts including ones from: Connie & Albert Taylor Trust; Esmee Fairbairn Foundation; GMB; UNISON; JCB; The Hayward Foundation; Heritage Lottery Fund; T&GWU; Geoff Hill Charitable Trust and the Alan Evans Memorial Trust.
Look out for more information on our campaign and sign up today to receive the Streets Ahead Standard, your own campaign newsletter keeping you up-to-date with all the buildings and their unique histories.
Streets Ahead campaign office