"Why should museums and galleries close at 5.30?"

Museums Last week some time, I commented during a live chat at The Guardian's website about the future of museums. This week, a round-ups been posted and my comment has been included. Here we go:

"From advanced interactive technology the conversation turned to the most basic of museum fundamentals – opening times. Commenter feelinglistless made the point:

"Why should museums and galleries close at 5.30? Why is it only possible for most of us to only see things at the weekend (when often they're closed on Sundays too)?"

"It seems to me that regional museums and galleries suffer because they're not seen in the same light as theatres, cinemas, concerts, restaurants etc in terms of a destination for free time or entertainment," he added.

Tapping into a market of working professionals who leave work as the museum doors close could not only increase foot flow and sales but might also have a positive effect on how the wider public view museums as a whole. By opening up the space into sociable and after-work hours, the museum becomes a entertainment hot-spot.

All of the panel offered their support for museums to open a little later and to provide evening events on a weekly or monthly basis – much like the Natural History Museum's After Hours programme."

It's interesting that they said "a little later".  My suggestion is for them to open as late as nine or ten o'clock.  Perhaps not every night.  The Louvre keeps its door opening until 9.45pm on Wednesdays and Fridays (but then it doesn't have enough staff to have all its rooms open all the time and is shut on Tuesday).  I'm not saying its a perfect example.

But we have to get out of this just being for special events and make it the norm.  For it to be accepted and expected.  Extra hours would cost money because of staffing and utilities and whatnot but it's not entirely unlikely that the extra footfall to use restaurants and shops.  Potential donations may compensate.

I'd be against charging for just these particular hours since that would nullify the benefits and limit access.  But this has to be something worth looking at.  As a nation we're rather stuck in rut in relation to our evening's entertainment and this would go some way to offering some extra freedom to those of us who keep the engines running during the day.

About Well, this was bound to happen some time. A review of this blog and luckily, a nice review. Thank you Leon and Jamie.

Ego Behind The Sofa (the Doctor Who blog I write for) was mentioned on Fearne Cotton's Radio One show on Tuesday morning. It's on the iplayer for another couple of days. Spin through to approx 02:11:50 and you'll hear them attributing Damon's post to Neil. But it just underscores that you never know who's reading.

My picture in the paper.

Photography



One of my photos of the Big Wheel at Liverpool One has been short-listed for a competition in the Liverpool Daily Post and was printed in today's paper. The rest of the shortlist is here. This is the winner.

how many people are reading this blog?

About Well, then, um, ah, wow. Creative Tourist, Manchester's guide for the creative tourist has put together a top 25 list of UK Arts and Culture blogs. The list includes the likes of Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian and other national journalists, The FACT blog and Art In Liverpool. It's really solid, really quite brilliant expression of culture blogging around the country. Except:

2. Feeling Listless
A surprise high entry for this independent blog from Liverpool that has been running since 2000. Feeling Listless covers every aspect of culture from arts and museums to politics and film

You're surprised? I nearly fell off my chair. How many people are reading this blog? The reason I ask is because this isn't just a pick a quarter of a hundred at random exercise. As they describe:

To get to our final list of 25, we used a number of different measures to assess the popularity of a blog. These include Technorati and Yahoo inlinks, Bloglines citations and the number of Google readers a blog has. Initially, we also included Alexa data (to assess site traffic) but as Alexa only counts from the top-level domain (e.g. ‘guardian.co.uk’ rather than the URL of one of the Guardian blogs), we considered that this would give blogs like those run by the major newspapers an unfair advantage. We then used an algorithm to combine the various criteria and give an overall scoring for each blog.

So again I ask, how many people are reading this blog? I know the phrase silent majority is a testy one to use on this day in particular, but who are you all?

Hello everybody.

the voice of a mega-fan

About On of my Radio Torchwood reviews has been mentioned at the Radio 4 blog:

"The most entertaining blog post Shownar exposes is this one, by Stuart Ian Burns on the Behind the Sofa blog. Stuart's not entirely won over by the radio version ("generally underwhelmed" he says) but then this is the voice of a mega-fan and he does find some kind words for writer Anita Sullivan.

[...]

I hope that Kate McAll and her team will be reading this one - I think there's a valuable fan's perspective on offer here. This is the kind of direct access to the opinions of listeners that these social media tools make possible. BBC programme makers will inevitably already have bookmarked Shownar."

Thanks Steve!

disconcerting but brilliant

Liverpool Life Liverpool: The Souvenir is a new book of photographs published by the Liverpool Daily Post which perfectly captures the atmosphere in the city during this capital of culture year. The images were selected from their flickr group and every page is bursting with life and colour even when the shots are in black and white, and if you turn to page 53, you’ll notice this:



The original image is here. I am very pleased and honoured to be sitting alongside such talented company, and I can’t recommend the book highly enough. And yes, I would still be saying that even if I wasn’t in it.

It seems to be on-sale in all good bookshops and newsagents around the city, including the place were I buy my morning paper, which is disconcerting but brilliant.

Obituary

Obituary, originally uploaded by feelinglistless.

I've posted the original email here. It's interesting to see how my letter has been sub-edited to pick out the most important points.

Elsewhere My Doctor Who review from last night (look down) has been quotes in this article at the Coventry Telegraph by Sci-fi space cadet David Bentley.

"I go all in... what the hell!" -- Victoria Coren, 'Late Night Poker'

TV My semi-review of Tuesday's Screen Wipe has been linked by the BBC Four front page:



Seeing my words next to a picture of Victoria Coren is a very, very surreal experience.

Partly Animous

TV Good lord, I've been linked by BBC Two's home page. A quote from my review of last night's Party Animals appears under a photo of Ashika. Hello everyone who's clicked through from there. Any news on whether its been recomissioned?