PLEASE HELP BROADFELD HOUSE GLASS MUSEUM
YOUR VOICE COUNTS
I find your comment quite extraordinary coming from, I assume, a glass enthusiate. However, maybe you want to just stir things up.
To me it is amazing that a council could envisage downsizing any museum that houses the heritage of the area it represents, however I am realistic enough to know that finances cannot be ignored, particularly in current times. Having said that, most council’s would give their eye teeth to have a museum that gives them access to a world stage, if only for the civic pride that it would engender. Unfortunately, Dudley MBC have a parochial attitude toward this world renowned museum that gives them direct access to tourism – part of their stated aim for the Stourbridge Glass Quarter. An aim that re-occurs throughout their own documents.
The question I believe you, and they, should be asking is, 'how can this resource be best used to advantage?'
Importantly, as a direct answer to your thought, the publicity that this ill advised decision has created is more than the council has given the museum over its entire life and has resulted in a huge upturn in visitor numbers, proving the point of the protestors. Visitor figures for January 2009 more than doubled the previous January, and all reports say that this upturn has been continued.
Perhaps instead of using an uninformed publicity department to act as the interface between the council and the protestors in order to ignore them, it might be a better use of that resource to actually publicise this award winning museum that is so important to both the local heritage and to the history of glass worldwide.
It is not always the bottom line that makes a decision correct. Often it is more about how to make best use of a resource. In this case for very little money invested into the correct publicity the resource could show a much greater return.
Lastly, using your 'bottom line' logic, one could take the highly manipulated Red House Cone visitor figures and find that that site should also be closed as being uneconomic - particularly as it houses a Grade I listed building that is in dire need of repair, making the site a liability financially speaking. So, should the council be allowed to let one of only four cones left in the UK fall down?
The bottom line isn't always the way to analyse the problem IMHO.
Nigel