 A subtitle for this post could be:“There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.”
Awesome tale from the Guardian, of the charity which spent just £1 to get a Grade II Listed building, which can hardly be said to be a bargain, as it now needs to raise £1 million to fix it up. Their plan: to turn Perrott's Folly in Birmingham into an open community center offering inexpensive and rewarding facilities and experiences to the deprived locals. The oddity: It's a spot on the Tolkien tourist trail, Looking down on where he lived as a child and where he went to school, it's been suggested as an influence on the towers in his books. The awesome quote showing the ambition to make this historic building a true source of pride and help to the community, and not just monetising it into "A loo, brew and a view"*: "We're working in estates where the history is of agencies coming in, doing projects and pulling out again – essentially these places have been abandoned. We don't want the people here to think aliens have got out of a spacecraft and taken over a building which is, quite rightfully, theirs. If all we ended up with here is four-wheel-drives pulling up and Mumsy, Mimsy and Wimpy hopping out for a quick look, and then driving away again 10 minutes later, as far as I'm concerned we'd have failed."Ben Bradley of Trident Reach the People Charity Read the whole story from the newspaper here, and also the press release from the charity, with a shot of the building's interior, here. To support their noble ambitions to restore and maintain one of 'Tolkien's Towers', while helping the community, get involved by sharing their fundraising page or by making a donation. * The phrase A loo, brew and a view was gifted to me by a staff member from the National Trust, to explain that all some people want from a site, in order of importance, is pleasant toilets, a good cup of tea, and something nice to look at while drinking the tea. And it doesn't really matter to them what that nice thing is.
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 Following a post about misuse of walkie talkies to the amusement and benefit of staff (warm kettle waiting for you!) I had a couple of message and a comment about what you lot do. It's good to know that this kind of abuse goes on pretty much anywhere that walkie talkies are used and the users get bored! Here's version two of the cartoon, with your further misuses.
Thanks to Rich for the snippets of commentary from "Rorke's Drift", which may become a full blown cartoon of it's own at some point! "Sarge! They're past the main walls! We couldn't hold 'em. I think they plan to take the cafe next... a group has just reached the gift shop....tell Mary I love her!" If you provide more examples, I'll make version #3 :)  Having just checked the behind the scenes stats for this site, people have found us via searching for a wide range of things. The obvious are all there, museum staff blog, art gallery cartoon, though some really make me wonder just what the person was after in the first place, and amuse me that they landed up here.
I've linked some to where I suspect they ended up! failure to communicate at work history and anger management big posh houses floppy snake My favourite "why were you searching for this?" and why did it link you to my site?: mischief toddlers do like getting into cupboards And my outright favourite due to there being one thing this person clearly needs to know about the subject: what can we learn from king author  Being fair to the management, we never had a bolshy notice like this in the staff room, but these were all genuine things we used the walkie talkies for while working front of house (sometimes with helpful input from the managers!). In our defense, it can get quite boring sometimes when you only see seven visitors all day, and we would often play the dafter games while prepping to open or cleaning down.
Also check out the cartoon about our fun numbers game. After the comment and a few privately sent messages, I've created a second version of this cartoon with YOUR misuses of technology. Thanks for sharing! Now call me a bit of a nerd, but I got pretty excited when I found via the Museum Practice website, a PDF from the V&A which explains their guidelines for producing gallery text. As you would expect it is concise, accessible, informative and easy to see how you can apply it in your own work with only a little adaptation. Getting this level of help for free is unusual, so it's well worth checking out for anyone who needs insight into communicating information in public areas. Have a reccy here and save it in a save place for future use! 
 The Art Fund are taking applications from museums and galleries to be considered for their Museum of the Year prize.
A panel of judges will decide the winner, but you can have your say on which museum or gallery you think has best bought its collections to life in 2012, and that information will help them "make sure all institutions that have been doing brilliant things are given the chance to apply." I'm not 100% sure what that means, but as it could lead to £100,000 for your favourite place, it's worth putting your opinion in! |
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February 2023
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