Showtown Opens To The Public

Showtown is Blackpool’s first ever museum, telling the extraordinary stories of the UK’s first mass seaside resort and its unrivalled role in the development of British popular entertainment.

Celebrating the town, its social history and the performers who make it sparkle, it offers visitors an immersive experience, using a superb collection of objects, ephemera and stories from the Blackpool Council collections, 27 loaned objects from the V&A and rarely shown items from the performers themselves.
 
Divided into six gallery spaces over 1000 sq m, Showtown explores the elements that make Blackpool so special: Seaside, Magic, Circus, Illuminations, Shows and Dance. The museum is full of fun, taking visitors behind the scenes and offering them the opportunity to have a go: taking their place on the promenade or performing a Punch and Judy show, magic tricks, circus skills, dressing up, producing a show, lighting the Illuminations, or dancing the Blackpool Way. This is a museum not just to be seen, but to be experienced close up.
 
The museum offers interactive games, audio visual prompts, music and laughter, encouraging the people who visit to play, explore and learn more about Blackpool and its people. Each of the galleries is a mixture of objects, including original costumes, props, puppets, posters, programmes, disco booths and dance floors. In each gallery the visitor will hear the words of entertainers (real and imagined) through the museum’s audio-visual displays, giving behind the scenes hints, tips and gossip. Their tales offer a glimpse behind the curtain into the world of show business. A radio and TV script writer has given each exhibition space its own voice, bringing to life the stories featured throughout the museum.


 
Showtown is part of a wider regeneration programme for Blackpool which will see investment in infrastructure, accommodation and other improvements in the town. It will offer a brand new visitor experience and provide jobs and a significant boost to tourist numbers and economic growth.
 
Selected highlights for each Showtown gallery:


 
EVERYBODY DANCE NOW
Blackpool is the spiritual home of ballroom dancing and this story started with the working-class holidaymakers for whom the spectacular Victorian ballrooms were built. It was thanks to these venues that the town led the way in the development of ballroom into a professional sport and became the setting for the world-famous Blackpool Dance Festival competition. The museum’s Dance section explores and features the spectacular dresses from BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. Visitors with a deeper interest in dancewear can follow the journey of these costumes at the ‘Dressmaker’s Table’ with Vicky Gill, who designs dresses for Strictly and for professional ballroom dancers. No story of the Blackpool dance scene would be complete without featuring the importance of the town to the Big Bands and to Northern Soul.
 
HOW’S TRICKS
TV magician Paul Zenon, one of the many magicians inspired by Blackpool, displays props
and mementoes from his career and talks about his Blackpool story. Magician and magic curator Roy Davenport also reveals some of the secrets and presents some of the key tricks that are part of the ‘Evolution of Magic’. Also featured is Romany Romany, the Diva of Magic and of course, Sooty and Sweep. Significant objects from the Tommy Cooper Collection at the V&A and the British Magic Museum are presented in Blackpool for the very first time.
 
SHOWS
This Lancashire seaside town has played host to the biggest stars in entertainment so the museum will look behind the scenes at the process of performing in the town. A stunning Danny La Rue costume is presented in the ‘Variety Wardrobe’ capturing the long tradition of the music hall and variety. A suit worn by comic double act Morecambe and Wise from the V&A feature in the ‘Comedy Wardrobe’ alongside pieces worn by Jane McDonald, Gracie Fields, Linda Nolan and Peter Kay
 
BESIDE THE SEASIDE
Visitors to this space can see and hear what visitors got up to in Blackpool almost 80 years apart through two interactive viewfinders. One will show the black and white photographs captured by Mass Observer Humphrey Spender in 1937 whilst the other will show the colourful contemporary works of photographer JJ Waller whose photographs were directly inspired by the Mass Observation material. In the ‘Punch and Judy Booth’, a conversation can be heard between Blackpool’s last Punch and Judy Professor Joe Green and his grandfather John describing their long family tradition of performing Punch and Judy in Blackpool. Giant digital panorama uses images and stories from Blackpool through the years to tell the history of the seaside that allow visitors to appear on the screen.


 
ROLL UP! ROLL UP!
Posters from Blackpool Heritage collections advertising acts from the 1890s through to today set the scene: Blackpool has been and continues to be an international centre for circus with the Blackpool Tower Circus entertaining audiences from 1894 until the present day. A display case full of props and gags used by the legendary clown Charlie Cairoli are on display alongside never before seen costumes on loan again from the V&A including the clown costume worn by James Stewart in the 1952 film, The Greatest Show on Earth.
 

ILLUMINATIONS
Blackpool’s pioneering use of electricity eventually led to the creation of more elaborate illuminated displays along the promenade in the 1920s. This gallery explores the story of the world-famous Blackpool Illuminations and offer visitors an insight into the design and manufacture of the lights. Part of the experience is a screen featuring a changing view of the wonderful hand-painted, single-point perspective illustrations of ‘road section’ illuminations design. As one drawing merges into the next on the screen, visitors feel as if they are travelling down the promenade through the Illuminations surrounded by a group of past and present designers and managers of the Illuminations as they discuss their designs. A stunning display of posters advertising the Illuminations through the years and the opening spectacle of Blackpool’s Illuminations being turned on by the stars, a tradition started in 1934 is displayed with the original Art Deco Switch On switch.
 
Showtown Blackpool has been made possible thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Blackpool Council, Coastal Communities Fund Lancashire Enterprise Partnership, Ken Dodd Charitable Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, The Wolfson Foundation, the Northern Powerhouse Fund, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, and the Pilgrim Trust.
 
Leader of Blackpool Council, Councillor Lynn Williams said:
“I am delighted and excited in equal measure for the opening of our Showtown museum. Blackpool’s first museum will be a new kind of experience for residents and visitors to enjoy. The museum celebrates everything Blackpool - its rich heritage, entertainment, dance, social history. Our town holds a unique place in the nation’s heart, and I know the museum will be enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors alike. Making the museum a reality is down to the hard work of so many people, so a very big thank you to everyone involved. Showtown forms part of our ambitious regeneration programme to make Blackpool better for everyone and to create more jobs and opportunities for our local people, for whom entry to the museum is free as well as free admission for our Blackpool schools.”
 
Helen Featherstone, Director, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund said: “From the Tower Ballroom’s famed dancefloor to glittering illuminations and the thrills and spills of the Pleasure Beach, Blackpool is a seaside town that is rich in entertainment heritage, so it is incredibly exciting to see this dazzling new museum, that will tell its fascinating and unique story, now open to the public. We’re very proud that, thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to invest £4.2m in the development of Showtown which is sure to attract visitors from far and wide for years to come, while standing as a beacon for the cultural regeneration of the town.”

Images: Hufton+Crow