Bradford’s Media Museum

Interested in historic TV & animation?

Thunderbirds

Wallace & Gromit

Zippy & Bungle

Jemimah, Hambel, Humpty, Big & little Ted

Gordon the Gofer!
Ever fancied reading the news?
Ever wondered how they project Harry Potter in IMAX?

Ever wanted to appear with the Teletubbies?

Or on Coronation Street?

Ever wondered how they filmed The wrong Trousers?
Or just want to chuckle at wierd and wonderful old tellys?

(I think Jason King had the round white one in his groovy pad).

I had one of those Philips V2000s! It looks huge now!
The Bradford National Media Museum is a fascinating day out and it is free! Lots of stuff about photography too. As recommended by the Greys…

Armed and extremely dangerous

Today we had a short trip into Leeds to visit the Royal Armouries. I didn’t take a photo of the outside but this was in the gift shop (you could buy those swords).

The entrance is a bit messy at present as there is a lot of building work going on.

The foyer space is tall and narrow, giving the impression of a lofty space.

David is admiring the iconic hall of steel tower, which is also the main stairway.

His view:

I’ll let the photos tell their own story.














Alas- David’s favourite exhibit was missing in action.

Wasting time in a fruitless but enjoyable way…

You push the buttons and the contraption transfers water from the Canal to the tank. It then drains back to the Canal!

Free Museums? No Thanks!

When we visited the waterways museum, they gave us a leaflet about lobbying for free museum entry, funded by the Government. (Details here)

I don’t agree with this. We already pay way too much in taxes for things we don’t want on the assumption that a small amount from everyone equates to a big pot of money for good causes. Unfortunately, it isn’t small amounts any more, it is nearly half of what you own.

They say it will secure financial stability, double visitor numbers and raise waterways to the national importance it deserves alongside coal, rail and maritime, all free to enter.

However, I think this is a cop-out. Getting given a bucket of taxpayer funding will make them complacent and stagnate. Having to work hard to get visitors to pay makes it worthwhile if they succeed. Those who want to come will pay anyway. There are lots of revenue streams related to the Inland Waterways for licensing, mooring fees and the like a lot closer to the interested parties than just all and sundry who happen to pay tax.

There is the risk, of course, that the museum could go bust without the funding. However, what is it that is causing it to be unprofitable, assuming it owns the freeholds? How about salary costs, compliance, health & safety, reluctance of volunteers because of bureaucratic hoops? The Government is the problem, not the solution.

Looking around the collections, it is apparent that the artefacts came together by the enormous efforts of a small band of passionate volunteers. Long may that prosper in all walks of life and I hope I’m doing my small bit to get a few more visitors along.

Over the winking bridge

Gateshead has an Art Gallery right next to the famous winking bridge. Housed in a former flour mill, it has five floors of galleries with scenic glass elevators, as well as a striking (and slightly bouncy) steel staircase the full height of the building (the stair-well of which has also been used as exhibition space on occasions).

Last Friday, Grandma Pat, young David and myself passed an hour or so in the space. David and I had visited previously and it was interesting to notice how the exhibits were completely different, but yet, something of the same in their resonance.

Starting as high as the lift normally takes you to level five, there is a balcony looking over into the highest gallery on level four. (There is a Restaurant on level six but it is reservations only). There is also the viewing box- a large projecting window out towards the five town bridges of the Tyne, namely the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, the Tyne Bridge (the one like the Sydney Harbour one), the Swing Bridge, the High Level Bridge (both rail and road), and Redheugh Bridge. (There are two more beyond, the Metro tramway bridge and the Western bypass bridge which used to be near the Chain Bridge and then a Box Girder replacement that had to be dismantled when they all started collapsing).

On level four, the exhibit was by Brian Eno (of Roxy Music) and was called Constellations (77 Million Paintings). The visitor is presented with 42 plasma and LCD screens of various sizes arranged quasi-symmetrically on a black wall in a darkened gallery. The screens appear to show static images but if you stay there long enough, they can be seen to imperceptably change accompanied by something described as interwoven sound ambient music.

Two couches and three benches across the centre of the gallery provided a suitable position to watch the ever-changing slides. I expected David to lose interest rapidly but he was fascinated, pointing out shapes and patterns that were gradually coming or going. Me being me, I worked out which screens were showing the same image in a different orientation and what hardware the computers probably had installed…

Moving down through the building, the next level had very large photo portraits by Brazilian Artist Vik Muniz. He photographs the faces reconstructed using differing materials (sometimes related to the topic), such as soil, toy soldiers, diamonds, berries, chocolate and even blood for Bloody Marilyn.

Below on level two, there was a smaller exhibition by American Artist Joseph Havel (the rest of the gallery was closed off beyond). the theme was night and the exhibits included a sort of suspended draped sheet made up entirely of cloth labels with the word “dream”, a curtain made up of stars cut out of American Flags and bent wire wrapped in shirt material and shaped into words. There were also a large number of shallow boxes arranged in a rectangle that also appeared to be full of cloth labels but it wasn’t clear what they said (or what the idea was).

Down on level one, a rather curious Marcus Coates exhibition of audio-visual impersonated birdsong was in progress, blogged about in another post. This was occasionally funny as well!

At Ground level, Indian Artist Subodh Gupta had created a new work which consisted of hundreds of stainless steel pots stacked in various sizes and groupings, slowly inching their way around a long endless track zig-zagging across a large square table on a mechanism not unlike airport luggage belts and a layout reminiscent of queues in large post offices. There were two other installations in the room. One was a heap of sacks, the other some sort of rubbery rods drooping drom the wall three-dimensionally.

The Baltic has a large gift shop with some unusual items that you won’t find in your municipal museum, including a range of Danish rubbery household items in vivid colours and an artistic flair such as washing up bowls and dustpan & brush sets. You can also buy a DVD of the famous installation where thousands of people got their kit off and stood on the Millennium bridge. David found this a bit disturbing because of all of the boobies and wasn’t overly convinced that it was OK because it was being done for artistic reasons. And no, he couldn’t take his clothes off and lie on the bridge, that would be silly…

Hidden treasures

Kingston upon Hull is a place we regularly pass through on the way to & from the P&O North Sea Ferries that go to Zeebrugge and Rotterdam.

On Sunday, however, we were there to revisit The Deep, the Millennium Aquarium project in the landmark building at the mouth of the River Hull which opened in 2002. We went there shortly after it opened and it was horribly crowded. This time, there was room to breathe although it did become much busier after lunch.

The highlight of the deep is a walk through a short tunnel through the deep tank (the surface is 30′ above), followed by a scenic lift ride supposedly through the tank itself (in reality separated by huge thick semi-circular acrylic windows).

Being interested in Engineering as well as architecture, it is a challenge how to work out how this building fits together as it doesn’t have too many walls inside that are vertical and parallel to each other. The exhibits spiral themselves down various ramps and platforms, the tour starting and finishing on the third floor.

I also noticed that an extension has been added to the building in keeping with the style giving them much more queueing space, a bigger gift shop and a new gallery opened by Kingston’s prodigal Son himself, the Deputy Prime Minister, Chipolata Prescott in 2005.

The prow of the building is actually windows in the Cafe and there is a viewing gallery above, sadly not open on to the great unwashed. The £3.50 building guide book informs me that it is not a prow, but a nosecone. It also informs me that it is the world’s only Submarium, but the world has been quietly dropped from the Deep Website apart from a context metatag.

Even lingering, the museum is only a two hour distraction, so we took in the opportunity to visit some nearby museums which were all free (although they didn’t open until 1:30pm, locals presumably being leisurely risers).

Our first port of call was the Hands on history, located in an old school building. As well as lots of stuff you could touch and feel, there was also an Egyption exhibition with reproductions of Tutunkhamun furniture (made locally for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924) their featuring very own Mummy.

We then moved on to the Streetlife Museum, a combination transport and street scene exhibit with a world exclusive- the Hull-York Mail Coach ride simulator!

Our final port of call was the Hull & East Riding museum, a combination of Natural History and Local archaeology. What I wasn’t prepared for was the stunning collection of roman mosaics, one of which is shown here. Of interest was a panel of how they remove them- they essentially roll them up like a carpet after documenting them and glueing laminate sheeting to the surface.

Kingston also has a lightship and a Trawler to visit, but they are open seasonally. However, four museums is enough for a day out…