Museums and heritage

A scheduled six-day strike by staff at the British Museum has been called off after a new pay offer was made.

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union said it had suspended the strike, due to begin today, after the museum presented it with an offer that "addresses the most pressing concerns of its members".

It said that although the offer falls short of meeting the union's entire claim, it includes significant concessions including a a cost-of-living payment exceeding £1,500 for most members.

The museum has also said that all staff will receive at least the London Living Wage (LLW), and has offered a percentage increase for all other staff beyond the civil service pay remit guidance.

PCS said the overall award, including both consolidated and non-consolidated elements, amounts to approximately 14% for the lowest-paid members of PCS. 

The offer is yet to be accepted and negotiations with the British Museum are set to continue.

Mary Doolin, PCS Full-time Officer, said: “Strike action is always considered a last resort. 

"The decision to suspend the strike demonstrates PCS' willingness to engage in dialogue when reasonable offers are made by employers."

The Victoria and Albert museum dedicated to children and young people will reopen to the public on 1 July, following a three-year closure and £13m refurbishment.

Young V&A – formerly known as the V&A Museum of Childhood – features over 2,000 objects dating from 2300BC to the present day. They are displayed across three new galleries: Design, Imagination and Play.

The range of different zones include an open design studio, a games design space for teenagers and an interactive Minecraft installation in the Play zone.

The museum, located in Bethnal Green, caters for children aged up to 14 and could help to fill the gaps in state school cultural provisions, said Tristram Hunt, the V&A’s Director.

“The V&A believes in the transformative power of creativity, and it’s critical we work to support and develop the next creative generation,” he said.

“The optimistic and transformative power of creativity radiates through Young V&A and we cannot wait to unleash it upon our teenagers to toddlers.”

The museum is free to enter and will run a programme of events and themed exhibitions throughout the year, beginning in October with an exploration of the influence of Japanese history and folklore on popular culture, technology and design.

The British Museum has offered to pay translator Yilin Wang for her work, after she alleged her poetry translations had been plagiarised.

Last week, the museum removed a segment of its China’s Hidden Century exhibition after the writer said she received neither credit nor payment for her translations of work by Chinese revolutionary Qiu Jin.

The museum said that it had issued an apology for the “unintentional human error” and had “offered financial payment for the period the translations appeared in the exhibition, as well as for the continued use of quotations from their translations in the exhibition catalogue”. 

The museum described the matter as “an inadvertent mistake”. It has offered Wang payment in line with its usual rates, The Guardian reported.

Museum staff spent years working on the exhibition, which includes 300 objects and research from more than 100 scholars from 14 countries. Some staff and curators were subject to “unacceptable” attacks on social media and through emails after the plagiarism allegations, the museum claims.

“We stand behind our colleagues fully and request those responsible for these personal attacks to desist as we work with Yilin Wang to resolve the issues they have raised concerning the use of their translations within the exhibition,” it said.

Academics who have previously worked with the museum have written to express their concern, including Julia Lovell, Professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck University and one of the principal researchers of the exhibition, who said she was “in full sympathy with Ms Wang’s anger”. 

“It was a genuinely accidental, unmalicious human error amid a very complex project, for which the British Museum have apologised profusely and sincerely, and sought to make amends,” she said.

In a statement on Twitter, Wang said that the museum had told her it would not be reinstating her translations in the exhibition. Her work is acknowledged in the exhibition’s catalogue.

Derbyshire County Council has pledged to offer continued support to Buxton Museum after it was forced to close for maintenance work.

The BBC reports that Buxton Museum and Art Gallery shut at short notice at the start of June when dry rot was found in the building, with no timeframe given for how long remedial work will take.

But after a visit to the museum Derbyshire County Council Leader Barry Lewis said there is an "absolute commitment" to the service.

"Closing the museum and art gallery was a great disappointment but necessary so that this vital investigation work can be carried out," he said.

"However, there is an absolute commitment to supporting the museum and securing the long-term future of its collections."

Eight members of staff are currently working to move exhibits to storage before being moved to other roles.

During the closure the council is encouraging visitors to continue to enjoy the museum via the Wonders of the Peak website and by taking a virtual museum tour.

A formerly run-down World War Two building at Bletchley Park has opened as a new museum learning centre, part of a £13million redevelopment of the historic site.

The centre is in Block E, originally built in 1943 as part of Bletchley’s wartime intelligence gathering operation.

The restored and refurbished building in Bletchley, Milton Keynes is dedicated to ‘formal and informal learning programmes’.

Lily Dean, Learning Manager for the Bletchley Park Trust, the independent charity that runs the site, said it would be a "state-of-the-art learning centre".

She added: “This facility will enable more students to visit us, supporting their studies in STEM subjects, and helping us to share the amazing feats of human ingenuity that took place at Bletchley Park with more learners than ever before.”  

Block E features eight learning spaces designed to host more than 13 tailored workshops.

The completion of the new learning centre is the concluding phase of a redevelopment project that has also seen the creation of a new permanent exhibition, 'The Intelligence Factory', and a Collection Centre housing more than 420,000 items relating to Bletchley Park's wartime work.