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Topic: National Media Museum could close...
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-04-2013 05:53 AM
My local paper mentioned it too, in the context of likely funding cuts to the National Railway Museum.
It's really difficult to separate the wood from the trees in situations like this. The museum wants to draw attention to its campaign against funding cuts and get as much attention as possible in doing so (quite understandably); therefore 'We might have to close' is going to have a much bigger impact than 'We might have to scale back our activities / charge for entry / lose some jobs' etc.
However, as the York tourism boss pointed out, the National Railway Museum is in a city that is already an established tourist destination for a lot of other reasons. If it did start charging for admission (and as she pointed out, it has done for most of its history - I went round it and paid shortly after I moved to York in 1999, and the place certainly didn't look empty to me), I don't think that would threaten its existence. If you've spent a three or four-figure sum on a holiday, a fiver to go round a museum will not be a deal-breaker.
Sadly, I fear that the NMM is more vulnerable, because of where it is. If you asked everyone at a typical Widescreen Weekend: (a) Would you have ever visited Bradford if this event was not taking place here, and (b) Have you visited any other major tourist attraction within a five-mile radius of Bradford city centre, I'd hazard a guess that an overwhelming majority would answer no to both. I understand that this is essentially what did for the pop music museum in Sheffield. The American equivalent to the NMM being in Bradford would be putting the Getty Museum in Blythe.
Perhaps the long-term solution for the NMM is to relocate to somewhere that isn't London, but which is more of an established visitor destination than Bradford.
P.S. Stephen - I replied to your private message.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-04-2013 08:46 AM
I think Bradford could do a better publicity job for itself. Apart from the NMM there's an industrial museum, mainly textile related, and several other museums.
Nearby, I think near enough that they have Bradford postcodes, there's Salt's Mill at Saltaire, the three-rise and five-rise locks on the Leeds & Liverpool canal at Bingley, The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway at Keighley, and via that Oakworth Station for Railway Children fans, and Haworth for Bronte fans.
I generally stay in Bradford twice each year, once for the Film Festival, and once around October for other things. Bradford is a good place to stay for visiting just about anywhere in the Northern half of England; both of the other museums under threat can be reached by direct trains from Bradford Interchange, as can Leeds, Ilkley, Blackpool etc. With one change at anywhere between Shipley and Skipton you can get to Carlisle, Lancaster, Morecambe etc. There are also buses into the Yorkshire Dales.
If all of these places are easily reached from Bradford, the reverse is also true of course.
While I am neither, I am told that Hebden Bridge is an attraction for both fashionable clothing types and lesbians. Come to think of it, whenever we ran lesbian-themed films at the clocktower they tended to use locations in Hebden Bridge and Todmorden.
Hotels in Badford are generally cheaper than those in other nearby areas.
Actually, the publicity in the local area isn't bad, but there seems to be little effort made to attract visitors from further away.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-04-2013 04:32 PM
Yup, it was Louis Le Prince who was based in Leeds and shot the sequence on Leeds Bridge (it was then called Roundhay Bridge). Incidentally, a group of Leeds-based documentary makers are making a film about him. One of those involved is Bill Lawrence of Widescreen Weekend fame. The other major film industry connection that Leeds has was that the city was home to the Gaumont-Kalee factory on Kirkstall Road, which was probably one of Europe's biggest projector manufacturers from the '20s until the late '50s or early '60s, when Rank (which owned G-K by then) closed it down in the aftermath of their VistaVision debacle and started to import Cinemeccanicas instead.
My understanding as to how the museum came to be in Bradford is that for a long time the Science Museum in London had a significant collection of photographic and moving image-related objects (including two of LLP's cameras, which used to be on display in the London museum - don't know if they still are), but nowhere to display them in, with the result that most were in storage. Due to a personal connection between someone on the Science Museum's board and the council in Bradford, the idea was floated. The council put up a big chunk of money to build the place, with the Science Museum taking responsibility for running it. If I remember correctly, it opened in the early or mid '80s, and had the first Imax screen in Britain.
It was largely because the Science Museum's moving image collection went to Bradford that the BFI decided to build their own museum on London's South Bank (the Museum of the Moving Image), though it was open for barely a deacade, from the late '80s to 1997.
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Dick Vaughan
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1032
From: Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-13-2013 04:16 AM
Ok Chaps.
As the first member of staff on site from February 1983 and ,despite many scares since , still here I thought it appropriate to post a little background.
Here's an extract from an article in Bradford's Telegraph & Argus which tells the story of how we came to be here.
Thirty years ago on June 16, 1983, Lord Snowden and the National Science Museum’s director Dame Margaret Weston, came to Bradford to formally open the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. It was an act of defiance, not by them, but by corporate Bradford.
Like much of the manufacturing north, Bradford Metropolitan District was reeling from the effects of high interest rates and public spending cuts that resulted in factory closures and unemployment in excess of 30,000. Bradford had to fight for its life.
The T&A has already highlighted the story of how Bradford Council’s then-chief executive Gordon Moore persuaded Dame Margaret Weston to back the idea of bringing a national museum to the hard-hit North – a minor miracle in itself – and locate it in Bradford’s biggest white elephant, the vacant Wardley Centre.
..The cost of £2.4m was offset by a grant from the European Community’s regional fund secured by Yorkshire West Member of the European Parliament Barry Seal.
After June 1983, Bradford had something extra special to magnify its ‘Surprising Place’ brand: the giant IMAX cinema screen. Leeds didn’t have one, it still doesn’t. Thirty years ago there wasn’t another one in England outside of London.
Leo, The LLP cameras are both on site here.
Obviously as a current employee I can't make too many comments on what senior mangement says or does but I can ask you to show support for us by signing the online petition to keep us open.
It also has links for the other Museum's potentially affected as well.
http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-the-national-media-museum-bradford?source=facebook-share-button&time=1370562767
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-17-2013 01:52 AM
Many thanks, Dick.
LLP's big problem was that he never got as far as coating photosensitive emulsion onto celluloid, and therefore producing transparent 'film' that could be projected through. His projector, according to Frederic Mason's description, was a sort of combination of a primitive Kodak Carousel slide projector and Reynaud's Théâtre Optique that projected glass slides in wooden frames at about 8-9fps. Mason is pretty clear that he demonstrated the principle of producing the illusion of movement by projecting multiple frames in quick succession, but without film it was never going to look convincing enough to sell.
Hence, I guess, all the conspiracy theories about his disappearance (e.g. that Edison sent contract killers after him). He could well have been on the verge of inventing film indepedently of Eastman - ultimately we'll probably never know - but a large amount of family debt leading to suicide is a more convincing, though mundane, explanation. About ten years ago the film historian Stephen Herbert discovered police photos in Paris of a body of a suspected suicide that was fished out of the Seine a few days after LLP vanished, but was never identified at the time. It looks strikingly similar.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-23-2013 11:24 AM
quote: Email received by Stephen
Culture minister Ed Vaizey has announced that he will decrease the proposed cut to the museums’ budget - and said that there was now “no question” of the museums closing.
Wonderful news! I met Ed Vaizey once at the reception followed by some London training event/symposium/boredomfest or other towards the end of my Northern Region Film & Television Archive days, and although it was only 2-3 minutes maximum, I formed the gut feeling that he had his head screwed on straight.
I've never visited the Manchester museum, but suspect that there are many ways that the NRM and the NMM could boost revenue without the need for radically bad things happening. Safeguarding free admission for all could be a tall order. In the case of the York museum, I don't think many of us living here would have a problem with the NRM going on the 'York Card' scheme (local residents can buy an annual pass costing a tenner which gets them free admission to any museums that receive any sort of local authority funding). I've had many friends and relatives visit me, and I've had no problem taking them to places where I get in for free but pay for them (e.g. the Minster) ... though I'd probably think twice if we both had to pay. I'd be completely happy to pay £5-10 when taking someone around the railway museum in that sort of situation, and I'm sure a lot of other York locals would. For someone visiting York for a holiday or short break, the cost of a museum visit is a very small component of the overall cost. Likewise, the IP value in some of Bradford's photographic collections could, I would guess, potentially be unlocked by some clever marketing, though their pool of potentially willing-to-pay visitors is probably significantly smaller.
£45m a year sounds a lot, but compared to what HM Government spends a day it really is a drop in the ocean. Really glad that the pressure has now been reduced on this one.
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