Archives for May 2010

Thirty-eight years separate me and my youngest son.

I imagine that keeping both of us happy in an environment of high culture is going to be a tough order. That is the kind of pressure on modern museums to compete with the myriad of distractions available to Londoners.

That is the challenge facing the Museum of London as it opens the galleries closed since 2007.

The ethos of the new galleries, billed as "You are here", is that there is a slice of all our stories revealed in the exhibits.

The newly refurbished galleries of Modern London start the story just after the Great Fire in 1666 and come bang up to the modern day.

Visiting a modern museum of this quality is not the experience of the 1970s. Much has happened to transform this sector over the past 30 years.

For a start big museums are partnerships and rely on the generosity of foundations that want to be associated with dynamic organisations.

These galleries both as a public space and a permanent exhibition need to capture the zeitgeist. So what do we get for 20 million quid?

Starting with the architecture there is a lot more open space and at the heart of the galleries there will be a green garden space that is in the middle of being refurbished.

It reminded me of some clever outdoor features of American museums stuck in high rise blocks. As a consequence there is a lot more natural light coming into the exhibition space than I recall.

The exhibits themselves try to convey the pattern of living that has evolved for the inhabitants of London since the late 1600s.

There are still some touchy feely bits like trying on hats or seeing a rats nest which my son was rather taken with. He was even more impressed with the interactive technology being used.

It works a bit like a touch screen application on an iPhone and as you peel away the layers more information is reveal, both audio and visual. The description from him was "so awesome".

Great care has been taken where possible to develop character narrative as you go through certain parts of the gallery.

For example a scallywag named Dick appeared in one interactive narrative and as a victim of justice in one of the more traditional displays of historical objects. In his case the judge's chair!

Modern day debt problems are put in context with a life-size recreation of a debtor's cell in Newgate prison. The really interesting feature is that the wooden walls and graffiti are original.

The Vauxhall Gardens, a popular 18th century pleasure spot are recreated in a sumptuous film and audio-visual experience of historical costumes. Much more engaging than rows of costumes on mannequins that used to be on offer.

Where these galleries really score though is with how they have enhanced the focus on 20th century changes.

A display of the suffragettes is thought provoking and at the far end of that corridor of the struggle for the female vote is a stark space of contemplation devoted to the struggle for survival.

The Blitz gallery has as its centrepiece a suspended German bomb. A film and audiovisual experience conveys eyewitness accounts of the trials and tribulations of living through wartime London.

Actually this is one of the most emotive parts of the new galleries and its message of a "journey towards hope" may leave you needing tissues or a strong coffee!

If teachers can keep children quiet, they will really get a flavour of the terror their grandparents and great-grandparents lived through.

One of the most innovative parts of the new galleries comes as you complete your journey.

There on a "river of ideas", and using the same touch screen technology deployed elsewhere, visitors are invited to vote on the concerns of contemporary and future London. Co2 emissions, transport infrastructure, religious schools and a range of other topical issues.

This is designed to be a live exhibit. Voters get instant feedback on how their preferences fit in with those of all other visitors to the gallery.

The museum's management hope they can climb back up to the visitor levels of nearly half a million before these galleries closed for refurbishment four years ago.

It might not be very scientific but with a bit of work that's one giant living poll on attitudes to modern London's problems. It's potentially a means by which the curators can make this museum alive to change as well as capturing the story of our past.

And despite the 38 years separating us my son and I had an awful lot to talk about on the way home. Now that is clever.

The Museum of London reopens fully to the public on 28th May.

After 65 years one of the longest serving political ghosts of the Second World War has finally been put to rest, in a planning meeting at Westminster Council.

Until 13 May 2010 there had never been approval for a memorial commemorating the deaths of the 55,573 aircrew of Bomber Command.

In a decision eagerly awaited by Commonwealth veterans from around the world, Westminster Council has finally given the go ahead to construct a Portland Stone and bronze memorial on the northern edge of Piccadilly at the junction with Hyde Park Corner and Green Park.

Fittingly, it sits almost opposite the RAF Club on Piccadilly where members of that armed service past and present still congregate to share memories, remember fallen comrades and ensure the RAF has a powerful support and lobbying network on Civvy street.

A few weeks ago Squadron Leader Tony Iveson (DFC) met me there to talk about the importance of the memorial and the sense of urgency that it get completed before the generation of men, like him, who flew in that conflict are no longer with us.

Tony's biography is like dozens of those old black and white war movies I watched as a kid rolled into one.

Early in the war he flew the legendary Spitfire before being recruited to be a pilot in 617 squadron made famous by the Dambusters. He flew Lancasters on the daring raids which finally sank the giant German battleship the Tirpitz.

Now 90 he exudes the modesty and charm of someone who has known heroes a plenty and thanks his own lucky stars for survival from the great lottery that war was.

As a longstanding chairman of the Bomber Command Association he says that getting this far is like a mission accomplished, to finally see his fellow flyers recognised for the contribution they made in defeating Hitler and preventing London being emasculated like so many German cities.

The political ambivalence surrounding Air Marshal Arthur 'Bomber' Harris in the aftermath of war, started when the full extent of the damage to German cities on the bombing raids, became known.

In particular the Dresden raids caused consternation in many circles; although in recent years doubts have been cast on the scale of the civilian losses and destruction reported by Nazi authorities at the time.

In what the architect Liam O'Connor has described as an especially challenging project, the design has won the day.

Its grandeur will no doubt inspire many generations to come; a monument to sacrifice, reconciliation and peace.

Now the politics is out of the way the architectural team led by Liam O'Connor can complete probably the last memorial of its kind to celebrate the sacrifices made in a war that is slowly fading from living memory.

The target is to have it ready for its first official commemoration on 11 November 2011 (11/11/11).

Although most people's attention was focused on the Parliamentary elections, here in London, council elections were of equal importance. All 32 London Boroughs went to the polls.

It was the first time in several decades that every local council would be elected on the same day as local MPs. Local elections have notoriously low turnouts. Not this time around.

With turnouts up everywhere even into the high 70 per cents, local authorities can genuinely feel confident they have a popular mandate.

Whilst the parliamentary map of London turned a deeper shade of blue, the local authority map turned distinctly red. Labour now runs 10 more Councils and overall a majority of 17 authorities across the capital.

It is difficult to interpret these results, perhaps it's ultimately pointless, what is, is.

Certainly there was a distinct lack of a Liberal Democrat surge or even support for administrations run by a coalition.

Nevertheless, there is a sense that local factors played quite strongly. In Southwark which has been beset by the post-Lakanal House fire problems, Labour was returned to power with a strong margin to spare in terms of seats.

In Islington, where Liberal Democrats have been heavily criticised for their housing policies it was Labour that benefitted at the polls. Again Labour achieved a comfortable majority.

Up in the far north of London a successful Conservative council was ejected despite a significant swing to two of the three Conservative Parliamentary candidates. Labour was genuinely surprised they were given such a comfortable working majority. It was a similar story in Ealing and Harrow.

There was bemusement at several of the counts which just shows what can happen when there is a large turnout. It may be that the relationship between the governed and those who govern is becoming increasingly unpredictable.

Perhaps the unpredictability sometimes emerges because those who are governing are less well informed than those who are governed and this is nowhere more obvious than in the places where we live.

Smart local authorities are learning this and working hard to involve local people in decisions which ultimately affect their lives.

I suspect getting local people involved in local services is going to become an objective many local authorities increasingly strive for.

Let's take one blatant example.

The "Right to Buy" policy introduced by the Thatcher government has made a real mess of home ownership in the capital's public housing sector.

Traditional landlords (local authorities) now face committed and informed leaseholders who have bought their properties on the open market.

No longer can local authorities bully leaseholders into agreements made without proper consultation.

This is just one example where elected local politicians have to listen a little more closely to those who have elected them. An era of greater cooperation and openness may be upon us.

Now I'm no psephologist, nor do I have any aspirations to be one, but I do recognise something unusual when it happens.

All sorts of predictions were made for last week's election many of which did not come to pass in London.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a stunt in Barking which sat awkwardly in the mass of general electioneering. It turned out to be one of many pulled off by the British National Party. It appears it all made little impact on local voters.

The BNP share of the vote declined although they did secure roughly the same amount of votes as in 2005.

At 61% turnout was very high for both the Parliamentary and local election votes. Given the resources and personnel pumped into this one constituency it says an awful lot about what the majority of people really thought about the BNP and their record in local government in Barking.

If you add to that the oft stated objective of Nick Griffin to really secure the Council, you can see what damage has been done to their movement.

They lost all 12 local council seats including that held by London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook.

I asked Nick Griffin during the campaign whether people might feel a vote for the BNP would be a wasted vote, since all the mainstream parties appeared equally tough on immigration.

He conceded the other parties had stolen his immigration cloak but that the voters would trust his party more.

That turned out to be as fictitious as the St George and the Dragon stunts Richard Barnbrook engaged in during the campaign.

But there is a deeper question here.

Why did voters not endorse the party that had spent weeks telling them they would save them?

Of course, it's possible that the threat the BNP perceive is not the same as the one most voters perceive.

If immigration is no longer dominated by the colour question it makes it much harder for them to identify their target.

The other mainstream candidates did not deny there was a set of important local issues arising from immigration. As well as recognising them, they also dealt more robustly with the ways to tackle them.

The fact that there was a swing to the Labour candidate, Tourism Minister Margaret Hodge, says a lot about the tenacity of her campaign.

It also vindicates the hard line taken by Hodge within her own party. Her campaign team stuck to their guns, despite wider internal party criticism, on her way of dealing with the issues local voters were concerned about.

She talked about local housing for local people (skin colour not a useful guide), public investment and jobs. There are lessons in that for other local election campaigners.

Both the Conservative and Liberal Democratic candidates engaged voters on the street head on. They focussed on their manifestos and the issues rather than each other.

They all told me during the campaign how sensible, no nonsense debate was the way to restore pride and political sanity to Barking.

There can be little doubt their combined common sense made Barking a watershed moment in British politics.