One of Manchester's favourite museums has reopened today (Thursday February 1) and has unveiled its brand new 2024 Banner Exhibition to the public.
Every year, People's History Museum in the city centre changes its collection of historical and political banners on display, cycling through its collection of hundreds of artefacts.
This year includes particularly significant banners commemorating the centenary of the first Labour Party government and 50 and 40-year anniversaries of significant mining strikes.
The banners are located in the main two galleries of the museum, allowing visitors to enjoy an immersive experience and take note of each of the new ones along the trail in its interactive Banner Bingo game.
Every year, People's History Museum in the city centre changes its collection of historical and political banners on display, cycling through its collection of hundreds of artefacts.
This year includes particularly significant banners commemorating the centenary of the first Labour Party government and 50 and 40-year anniversaries of significant mining strikes.
The banners are located in the main two galleries of the museum, allowing visitors to enjoy an immersive experience and take note of each of the new ones along the trail in its interactive Banner Bingo game.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 It's a core part of what we do here at the museum. Although we do big yearly shows in
00:05 our gallery 3 space, the banner hang is a chance for us to think actively about our
00:12 collection here and to highlight our main galleries, our gallery 1 and gallery 2 spaces.
00:17 One of Manchester's best museums has reopened today on the 1st February and has unveiled its
00:23 brand new 2024 banner exhibition to the public. Every year, People's History Museum in the city
00:29 centre changes its collection of historical and political banners on display, cycling through
00:34 its collection of hundreds of artefacts. This year includes particularly significant banners
00:40 commemorating the centenary of the first Labour Party government and 40 and 50 year anniversaries
00:46 of significant mining strikes. The banners are located in the main two galleries of the museum,
00:51 allowing visitors to enjoy an immersive experience and take note of each of the new ones along the
00:57 trail in its interactive banner bingo game. So there are 26 banners in the collection of this
01:03 year's exhibition and the main themes, like how I curated it and thought about thematically,
01:08 was to highlight ongoing public sector campaigns. We're filming this today on a day of a week of
01:14 rail action that's happening in the UK, you know, so it's quite current. There's also the anniversary
01:19 of the miners strike this year coming up and lots of the banners in the exhibition have links to
01:25 kind of the miners strike from 1984 to 85. There's also banners within the collection that kind of
01:31 link to kind of climate protests. We're standing next to an Extinction Rebellion Calderdale banner
01:37 here and thinking about kind of ongoing environmental and climate activism. The museum
01:41 was founded with the banner collection it has and then expanded upon so they're kind of a core aspect
01:47 of what we do and the story we tell here and the kind of the conservation and kind of preservation
01:53 of those banners is really important. The conservators have been hard at work preserving
01:58 and restoring historical banners, many of them taking up to 100 hours of work. I think the ones
02:04 I'd highlight this year would be, I really like the the gays against fascism banner in gallery two
02:10 and the Mansfield Labour Party women's section banner in gallery two. We're both really interested
02:16 in in the kind of the storytelling in that the Mansfield Labour Party banner was made at the
02:22 museum in the 80s by a group of women who kind of individually created squares that created the
02:30 banner when sewn together. Whilst the gays against fashion banner was again made in Manchester
02:34 and was made in response to the National Front kind of attacking gay men at the time but was
02:42 also made and used in solidarity with striking miners. What's really interesting about lots of
02:48 the banners that we have on display is that the kind of the cross solidarity of different movements
02:53 which I feel is increasingly important.