The Past brought to Life
https://www.mylondon.news/news/property/gallery/inside-stunning-church-tower-next-18969186
The Old Operating Theatre Museum is in St Thomas Church, Southwark, part of the old St Thomas Hospital. The Church, built in 1703, by Thomas Cartwright has a fine baroque Tower, the top two chambers of which have been empty for many years. The conversion to a bijou pied a terre has been completed and details can be found in the link above.
The Passenger Pigeon Manifesto is a call for cultural institutions to open their digital archives for free use by the public. You can see the manifesto in the link below.
It would mean a loss of income from copyright for organisations who are already short of money but on the other hand it would help greatly increase access to our cultural heritage, and, it would help preserve these items, at least digitally, into the long distance future.
So, to my mind, a good thing. I’m trying to find out how to sign up.
Please note it is not asking for low quality reproduction but the high definition copies.
Here is a round up of some of the front-runners in the competition for the Museum Bum of the Virus. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8551951/Battle-bums-Museums-raise-cheeky-smile-online-contest.html
My old museum the Old Operating Theatre Museum has a featured rear.
A couple of my regular places have been affected by the effects of the toppling of the Colston Statue in Bristol.
Firstly, the statue of Robt Milligan outside the Museum of London, Docklands has been taken down. I have often used this as a meeting point for my students from Westminster University as we explore the Docks and the Docklands Museum.
Slavery was a big part of the visit, although we didn’t make Milligan the villain.
Another site is the Geffrey Museum which is going to open as the Museum of the Home, although this was determined before the George Floyd murder, but now I expect the Geffrey part of it to quietly disappear, as he is also contaminated by slavery.
Interesting fact about slavery, is that UCL have done a brilliant study of all the recipients of the compensation for the end of slavery. The govt at the time paid compensation of £20m to the slave OWNERS. This was a vast amount said to be 45% of the GDP for the year. It was funded by a long term loan which was paid back, as late as, 2015. In modern terms it was 16 billion £.
This has completely changed my mind on compensation for slavery which I was against. But it seems to me if we know that £16 billion was spent then to compensate the owners we could set up a fund of £16 billion now to give, for example, educational grants and start up grants for black people to give them the boost they need to make up for centuries of oppression..