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Article contents
BCLM: Forging Ahead: building a new urban history of the Black Country
Part of:
Surveys and Speculations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2020
Abstract
The recreation of urban historical space in museums is inevitably a complex, large-scale endeavour bridging the worlds of academic and public history. BCLM: Forging Ahead at the Black Country Living Museum is a £23m project recreating a typical Black Country town post-World War II. This article uses case-studies of three buildings – a Civic Restaurant, a record shop and a pub – to argue that urban-historical research methodology and community engagement can both create a vivid sense of the past, and challenge pervasive prejudices. It also argues that such a collaborative and public project reveals much about the urban and regional nature of industrial areas like the Black Country in this pivotal historical moment.
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- Survey and Speculation
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
†
I would like to thank my colleagues at the Black Country Living Museum, and the project's historical advisory panel for their support and advice throughout this project. I am also particularly grateful to Dr Oliver Betts, Prof. Matt Houlbrook, Dr Shane Ewen and Dr Tosh Warwick for their comments on this article.
References
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3 BCLM's interpretative ethos is ‘real lives, real stories’, so that while archival research has included sources covering the whole of the region such as newspapers, council reports and publications, focus has been particularly on the individual buildings included within Forging Ahead. Extensive and ongoing oral history research has been undertaken in relation to each of these buildings in dialogue with the archival work, to ensure individual stories are at the forefront of research and interpretation.
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35 BCLM, Forging Ahead Oral History Project 2018/010/001, interview with Cynthia Burgin, 28 Nov. 2017.
36 Although local community representatives have fed into the selection and research process since the earliest planning stages, the nature of interpretation within a living museum – involving translocated or replicated buildings, set at a specific point in time – means this project is not formally co-production in a strict museological sense.
37 BCLM, Forging Ahead Oral History Project 2018/010/001, interview with Kay Quinn regarding L. Thomas hairdressers, conducted by Clare Weston and Nadia Awal, 15 Jan. 2018.
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