After ten years in development, Blackpool’s first museum, called Showtown, is opening its doors to the public. Located along the city’s iconic seaside promenade – fondly referred to as the ‘Golden Mile’ – the team behind the new attraction describe it as a “museum of fun and entertainment”.

Set over 1,000 square metres, Showtown is first and foremost a celebration of Blackpool and its rich history of entertainment, for which the city has long been known. Beginning in the late 19th century, visitors started flocking to its streets to attend comedy shows, visit the circus, experience the opera and witness the magic of live performers.

Showtown covers many of these aspects of Blackpool’s heritage, with six galleries curated under the following themes: seaside, magic, circus, illuminations, shows, and dance. At the heart of the galleries are exhibits relating to the performers themselves, with many emerging and established names in entertainment and performing arts having passed through the city over the last two centuries, honing their crafts and wowing excited audiences.

The spaces inside Showtown were designed by Casson Mann, a London-based studio specialising in interiors, museums and exhibitions. Speaking on the project, Casson Mann director Gary Shelley says Blackpool’s “resonance in popular British culture” is what drew the studio to the project. “Sure, there are museums that document British working life, but this is a visitor attraction about a place where working people let their hair down and have fun!” he says. “It’s a chance to tell a fun story in a fun way to audiences that are, in many ways, still very much part of that story.”

The team at Casson Mann oversaw the creation of the six spaces, each of which were conceived with maximum audience engagement in mind. Highlights from these galleries include a wall-length digital projection showing a day at Blackpool beach; a behind-the-scenes look at the circus through a clown’s dressing room; and a space in which visitors can create their own illuminations to be projected onto an expansive view of Blackpool’s streets.

As part of the process of developing these galleries, Casson Mann consulted a ‘clowncil’ of comedians and magicians to better understand the meaning of fun and entertainment. As such, text around the museum forgoes traditional styles in favour of jokes and lines in verse, which were developed with the help of a radio and TV scriptwriter. This text sets the tone for the rest of the experience, which promises to be full of fun and intrigue.

Casson Mann also commissioned Bath-based illustrator and graphic artist Alex Williamson to create a series of graphics and large-scale artworks for the museum, tying all of its spaces together.

For the project, Williamson worked with material from Blackpool’s Heritage Collection, sourcing printed ephemera, old posters, postcards and photography. These became the basis for collage pieces, an approach chosen to reflect the experience of taking a walk along Blackpool’s famous promenade.

“He helped unify the huge variety of 2D assets into one design language, which helps to knit the museum spaces together and give a unique identity to Showtown,” the studio says of Williamson’s pieces. “These artworks are intended to creatively capture and represent the ‘curated chaos’ of Blackpool – the invention, wit, spirit, culture and history of a unique place with a unique visual and social history.”

 

Showtown opens on March 15; showtownblackpool.co.uk; cassonmann.com; alexwilliamson.co.uk