Working with our local community
The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust strives to ensure its museums are welcoming for everyone.
This includes making them accessible for people with physical and hidden disabilities, as well as welcoming in groups and individuals from our local communities who haven't had reason to visit us before. We organise events and can offer spaces where community groups can hold their events.
Find out about some recent projects below.
Boosting accessibility at our museums
In the last 12 months the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust has taken big steps to boost accessibility at Blists Hill Victorian Town, its largest museum, for people with physical and hidden disabilities.
This has included introducing Here to Help volunteers to assist and advise visitors, creating a Sunflower Room (calm space) and providing sensory bags to improve the experience of visitors with SEND, and introducing mobility scooters for use by visitors who need help navigating the ups and downs of the site. We have worked with local organisations like PODS to help inform what we do.
There has been a brilliant response from visitors and we hope to continue to expand our services.
Go to our dedicated page to find out more about access at our museums.
The Back a Yard initiative
Back a Yard is a West Midlands-wide initiative developed and led by Doctor Tony Talburt and Doctor Pedro Cravinho at Birmingham City University. The aim is to create a unique historic collection of personal documentary material related to Caribbean migrants from across the West Midlands.
The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust is working with Doctor Talburt and Doctor Cravinho to represent the Caribbean community in Telford and Wrekin, Shropshire and the surrounding areas.
We regularly host drop-in events, at our museums and other community spaces, where members of the local Caribbean community can share their stories of life in Telford. They can leave copies of letters, photos, boarding passes, payslips and passports that will be added to our collections and serve as a valuable resource for future generations and researchers.
Graffiti project for local students
Students from Telford College recently took part in a graffiti project led by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and funded by Historic England.
The Trust was awarded an Everyday Heritage Grant by Historic England to fund the project. Everyday Heritage Grants are awarded for projects that celebrate working class histories and the historic places that make up everyday life.
Sixth-form students from Telford College worked with the Trust and local graffiti artist Neil Willis to create graffiti works inspired by the everyday working lives of people in the Ironbridge Gorge. They visited three of the Trust's museums, Blists Hill Victorian Town, Coalport China Museum and Jackfield Tile Museum, to learn about the history of the buildings and the working people associated with them, then produced large-scale graffiti works that will now go on display in the Trust's museums.
Celebrating the Windrush Generation
For the last two years, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust has run special events to celebrate Windrush Day on 22 June.
At this year's event, in partnership with Telford & Wrekin Council, Telford & Wrekin Interfaith Council, and Telford African and Afro-Caribbean Resource Centre (TAARC), we hosted a special ‘Saturday Soup’ event.
Saturday Soup is one of the culinary traditions brought over to the UK from the Caribbean by members of the Windrush Generation. The Windrush community in Britain would get together on Saturdays and exchange stories over this traditional one-pot chicken, beef or vegetable soup.
As well as being able to try the delicious soup, we had music from Piranha Sound, poetry and stories from the Caribbean.
Bringing young people into our museums
Teenagers and young people can think that museums aren't for them.
To show that ours are, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust has worked with local secondary schools to host events during school holidays where young people can come and find out more about the museums.
They get the chance to take tours of our sites and talk to staff members to find out more about working in museums.
We ask the young people for feedback so that we can make changes to make our museums more welcoming to them.
Some of the young people have gone on to volunteer for the museum, taking an active role in events and clearly demonstrating that museums can be for them after all.
Hosting a Dementia Cafe
The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust is partnering with Home Instead Telford South to host a monthly Memory Cafe for people living with dementia and their carers.
On the last Tuesday morning of the month they come to Coalbrookdale to meet new people and get support.
Find out about the next event on the What's On pages.
We are happy to hear from local organisations and individuals who would like to partner with us in some way. To find out more contact us.
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