Behind the Scenes at the Museum - BBC4

Three-part series starts this week - "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" showing three museums "struggling to connect with a modern audience."

This week it is the Commercial Vehicle Museum, Leyland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00scr08

One hopes that the content (which appears to show unfortunate internal issues) has a positive outcome and shows a way forward and gives some positive publicity for the Museum. It will be interesting to see how other organisations deal with change in this modern, demanding world.

 

What a quality piece of TV this was, totally fantastic.

 

Actually I was thinking the exact opposite.

A personal dispute between two senior members of the Leyland museum world was almost the sole focus of the programme with almost nothing said about the actual management of the museum, the age and background profile of those involved, the commercial practices, curatorial intentions, and long term strategy of the museum - which is where its future will spring from.

The dispute may have made good telly, but it told us nothing about how a museum needs to structure itself to succeed in today's world

It was also interesting that despite having been an active participant in that world, and in that exact area, there was only one face that we recognised in the entire programme.

 

Down here the transmitting station near Oxford had a fire yesterday, so when switching on BBC4 at 9.00 p.m. - no signal. Watched "Have I got News for You" instead, trying BBC4 again at intervals. At end of HIGNFY finally got a signal, but missed half the programme. Will it be repeated? Despite that, can't really see the connection between a display of Victorian 'Magic Lanterns' etc., and a Transport Museum.

Now (35 minutes later) have seen what I missed last night.

It is being repeated again next Tuesday at 7.30 p.m. on BBC4.

 

I disagree, the new boss was all about promoting the museum, setting targets, pointing out the business facts that if not enough people come through the door, then we make no money and its been a failure.

So often in the museum world, especially those that are staffed by volunteers, its the management who don't change, because it works for them. In this case it was the friends who didn't like change and were quite happy to sit back and forget the bigger picture.

It was interesting TV, but I do wonder how the film crew would have coped with what happened at a museum in west london where the volunteer curator posted details of his second circumstition on the internet, set the place on fire then denied it, whilst his boyfriend posed for photographs with vistors making hand gestures behind their backs.

Museums need to realise that they have to compete with theme parks and other attractions if they are to survive, but so very often it is more about the whims of a few, motivated by ego or personal financial gains that let a place down.