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Museum of Croydon
The Museum of Croydon is a museum located within the Croydon Clocktower arts facility in Central Croydon, England. It showcases historical and cultural artefacts relating to the London Borough of Croydon and its people. The museum is owned and run by Croydon Council.
It is located on the upper ground floor of Croydon Clocktower, but also incorporates the Riesco Gallery, on the lower ground floor, which displays Roman and Anglo-Saxon collections and a collection of Chinese ceramics. The museum originally opened under the name Lifetimes in 1995; and re-opened under its present name, following a major redevelopment and redesign, in 2006. Admission is free, and many of the displays are hands-on and interactive.
Prior to the end of the 20th century, the County Borough and its successor the London Borough of Croydon did not run a local museum, despite many decades of lobbying by, among others, the Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society. However, the two councils had acquired an art collection of over 2,000 items, and also the Riesco Collection of Chinese pottery and porcelain, assembled by local collector Raymond Riesco and bequeathed to the County Borough in 1964. In 1987, conscious that the borough had an "identity problem" – it was perceived as "boring, bland and mediocre" – the Council committed £30 million towards a new arts, library and cultural complex, subsequently named Croydon Clocktower, which was to include a new local museum.
Plans for the museum were developed over five years, from 1989 to 1994. The development process included an extensive programme of market research, undertaken in order to ascertain what the public wanted from a museum, and to make it accessible and relevant to the wider community. A particular effort was made to involve non-traditional museum users: participants in 8 out of 10 focus groups were selected on the basis of their ethnic diversity, their lack of educational qualifications, and their agreement with the statement that "I wouldn't be seen dead in a museum or arts centre". The research found that the words "Croydon", "museum" and "history" were all "turn-offs", and so the new institution was given the neutral name of "Lifetimes". Sally MacDonald, the principal museum officer, later explained:
Croydon's museum had to be new, different, modern, daring, high profile, glossy, sponsorable and popular. It would be a symbol to help market Croydon to a hostile outside world.
Lifetimes opened in March 1995. It set out to tell the story of Croydon and its people from 1840 to the present (and into the future), with the main emphasis being on the period from 1939 onwards. Exhibits were mainly borrowed from local residents; much information was drawn from oral history interviews; and there were no glass cases or labels (interpretation and explanation being supplied entirely through multimedia computer terminals). In a token acknowledgement of the borough's earlier history, an entrance sculpture was commissioned tracing Croydon's story back to the Big Bang.
Lifetimes won an Interpret Britain Award in 1995; and the National Heritage Multimedia Award in 1996. Gaynor Kavanagh, lecturer in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, hailed it as:
a brave, bold and intelligent approach to exploring the contradictions and continuities which lie behind the complex histories of modern-day Croydon. ... After decades of striving for exhibitions that work against the grain of a male, white, middle class view of history, it is both refreshing and empowering to find an exhibition which is confident, uninhibited yet sensitive in its handling of the plurality of life.
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Museum of Croydon
The Museum of Croydon is a museum located within the Croydon Clocktower arts facility in Central Croydon, England. It showcases historical and cultural artefacts relating to the London Borough of Croydon and its people. The museum is owned and run by Croydon Council.
It is located on the upper ground floor of Croydon Clocktower, but also incorporates the Riesco Gallery, on the lower ground floor, which displays Roman and Anglo-Saxon collections and a collection of Chinese ceramics. The museum originally opened under the name Lifetimes in 1995; and re-opened under its present name, following a major redevelopment and redesign, in 2006. Admission is free, and many of the displays are hands-on and interactive.
Prior to the end of the 20th century, the County Borough and its successor the London Borough of Croydon did not run a local museum, despite many decades of lobbying by, among others, the Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society. However, the two councils had acquired an art collection of over 2,000 items, and also the Riesco Collection of Chinese pottery and porcelain, assembled by local collector Raymond Riesco and bequeathed to the County Borough in 1964. In 1987, conscious that the borough had an "identity problem" – it was perceived as "boring, bland and mediocre" – the Council committed £30 million towards a new arts, library and cultural complex, subsequently named Croydon Clocktower, which was to include a new local museum.
Plans for the museum were developed over five years, from 1989 to 1994. The development process included an extensive programme of market research, undertaken in order to ascertain what the public wanted from a museum, and to make it accessible and relevant to the wider community. A particular effort was made to involve non-traditional museum users: participants in 8 out of 10 focus groups were selected on the basis of their ethnic diversity, their lack of educational qualifications, and their agreement with the statement that "I wouldn't be seen dead in a museum or arts centre". The research found that the words "Croydon", "museum" and "history" were all "turn-offs", and so the new institution was given the neutral name of "Lifetimes". Sally MacDonald, the principal museum officer, later explained:
Croydon's museum had to be new, different, modern, daring, high profile, glossy, sponsorable and popular. It would be a symbol to help market Croydon to a hostile outside world.
Lifetimes opened in March 1995. It set out to tell the story of Croydon and its people from 1840 to the present (and into the future), with the main emphasis being on the period from 1939 onwards. Exhibits were mainly borrowed from local residents; much information was drawn from oral history interviews; and there were no glass cases or labels (interpretation and explanation being supplied entirely through multimedia computer terminals). In a token acknowledgement of the borough's earlier history, an entrance sculpture was commissioned tracing Croydon's story back to the Big Bang.
Lifetimes won an Interpret Britain Award in 1995; and the National Heritage Multimedia Award in 1996. Gaynor Kavanagh, lecturer in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, hailed it as:
a brave, bold and intelligent approach to exploring the contradictions and continuities which lie behind the complex histories of modern-day Croydon. ... After decades of striving for exhibitions that work against the grain of a male, white, middle class view of history, it is both refreshing and empowering to find an exhibition which is confident, uninhibited yet sensitive in its handling of the plurality of life.
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