Black Country Living Museum celebrates best ever visitor numbers
More people visited the Black Country Living Museum during 2018 than ever before, it has been revealed.
Last year was the popular Dudley attraction’s busiest ever, with more than 355,000 people coming through the doors.
The total was a seven per cent increase on 2017 and came during the year the museum marked its 40th anniversary.
Bosses will be hoping visitor numbers continue to rise, with a major expansion planned for the museum over the next decade.
Announcing the increase via its social media channels, the museum said: “It’s official: 2018 was our best year yet! We welcomed 355,054 visitors to the museum to learn all about us Black Country folk, a seven per cent increase on 2017.
“Thank you to everyone who paid us a visit and of course to our hardworking and passionate staff and volunteers. Here’s to 2019.”
Chief executive at the museum Andrew Lovett added: “I just want to thank people for their support.
"We live and breathe by the people who come to the museum, and have a great experience. Their support is hugely appreciated. It’s the biggest validation of what we do.
“It’s absolutely great to see this. But the thing is it’s our fifth year of continuous growth - cresting 350,000 felt very special.
“Everybody feels very warm about it, particularly as we just opened the museum after some closures during January. It’s put a spring in our step for the year ahead.”
It’s been a successful 2019 so far for the Black Country Living Museum - after it was gifted a £90,000 grant to go toward its latest major project, the Forging Ahead, Cast-Iron Houses development.
The money came from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s Wolfson Fund for the project, which will allow staff to move the museum’s Cast Iron houses into the attraction’s 40s and 60s town, reinterpreting them using real Black Country stories to create an immersive wartime and post-war living experience.
Mr Lovett added: “For us this year we will find out within the next few months whether we have secured the £9.4m from the Heritage Lottery Fund, to go towards the £24m needed for Forging Ahead.
“If this happens then that is tremendously exciting, not just for us at the museum but for the Black Country as a whole.”
He added that a lot was still to come this year, with February half term and Easter events already planned.
“Although I hope we will start to build on our new projects at the museum, there will be a huge number of activities for visitors as well,” said Mr Lovett.
