Exploring 20th Century London online

6 October 2006

Whether you’ve embraced the new millennium or barely had time to catch your twenty-first century breath, Exploring 20th Century London, www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk, which launches this week, offers an online encyclopaedia of some 8000 objects which tell the story of the capital across the last century.

The groundbreaking website project draws on the collections of four London museums, exploring the rich diversity of city life, and providing an innovative and official public record of a hundred years of extraordinary change.

Exploring 20th Century London gives voice to the stories of a great world city approaching a new millennium: stories dramatic and everyday, nationally significant and deeply personal. A click of a mouse will take you into the holdings of Museum of London, London’s Transport Museum, the Jewish Museum and the Museum of Croydon.  The site is packed with images, artefacts, sound files and database records which tell some surprising tales of life in the city and its many communities.

Discover why whale meat was the dish of the day, what drew a crowd of thousands to a Highgate bus driver’s funeral, who ate chocolate flavoured worm cakes, where Bollywood first arrived, and how Protein Wisdom took on the city’s licentiousness. Debate the identity of London and Londoners as you search by borough and find the history of your patch through local artefacts, or explore by themes, which include everything from Art and Design, Migration and Transport, to Politics, Communities, Youth Culture and Fashion.

From fetish maps to faith booklets, the site offers myriad routes to explore London’s brilliant parade and opens up unseen treasures to the public, as London’s Transport Museum undergoes its re-build and re-display project and Museum of London prepares for its biggest ever refurbishment, which will bring the Museum’s amazing twentieth century collections into its galleries for the first time.

Exploring 20th Century London offers all Londoners a first glimpse into these holdings, and provides the largest collection of the museums’ images ever made accessible online, including important and previously unknown pictures, such as a photograph of black activist Claudia Jones speaking at Trafalgar Square in 1961.

The project is a collaborative initiative, funded by the MLA Designation Challenge Fund and the London Museums’ Hub.

Jack Lohman, director of the Museum of London says “Exploring 20th Century London presents a hundred years of London and Londoners through a technology born in the century whose story it tells. I’m extremely excited by the opportunities this website affords us to make our collections and holdings more widely accessible.  It is a key example of museums forging new partnerships and working practices, and will work as a pilot model for future projects, in the London Museums’ Hub and beyond.”

Sam Mullins, London’s Transport Museum Director said: “The Exploring 20th Century London initiative has brought to light many fascinating objects previously unseen by our users. Seeing these diverse collections together for the first time makes connections and shows transport to be the glue which both binds Londoners together and sets the visual identity of the city.”

Notes to editors

For more information and images, please contact Tim Morley on 020 7814 5607 (tmorley@museumoflonfon.org.uk)

1. Museum of London is the only museum to tell the story of London from pre-historic times to the present day. Find out what Romans ate for dinner, experience the Great Fire of London, go window-shopping in our Victorian walkway and be amazed by the magnificent Lord Mayor’s coach. Admission is free.
   
   The Museum’s Capital City project is a £18 million redevelopment of its lower galleries, retelling the story of London and Londoners from 1666 to the present day. The project, which is the largest the Museum has seen since opening in 1976, will revitalize the galleries with an innovative design by Wilkinson Ayre architects that opens up 25% more gallery space and creates a glass frontage overlooking London Wall.  The new galleries will open in 2009 with significantly increased access to the Museum’s objects, both in the galleries and online, and will also include a new Clore Learning Centre, a theatre and a central Sackler Hall containing an information zone and coffee point.
   
   To hear about our exciting events programme and start exploring London’s history and the histories of Londoners visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk or call 0870 444 3851.
2. London’s Transport Museum in Covent Garden is currently closed for a dramatic re-build and re-display project, opening at the end of summer 2007. Research for Exploring 20th Century London has enabled new and previously unseen material to feature in public displays. More new features include a World City welcome area, Design Gallery and the famous posters, photographs and other works on paper will be included within displays for the first time. Extra facilities include the 120 seat Cubic Theatre, more educational areas, a new café and shop. For more information see www.ltmuseum.co.uk or call 020 7379 6344.
3. This project is part of a larger initiative by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to make the records held in the UK’s museums, libraries and archives available to a wider audience – The People’s Network Discover Service (PNDS). The technical delivery of the project has broken new ground by sending the records from the databases held by each partner to the PNDS where the different datasets are processed and made available to the project’s own content management system (CMS), ‘Amaxus’ from Box UK. The CMS joins the data with its associated media files and contextual information, before publishing them all in a readable form on the website. This is the first project to use this national infrastructure as a way of aggregating and then publishing data to another content management system.