‘A riot of colour and fun’: Showtown celebrates Blackpool’s entertainment heritage

‘We’ve never specified so many colours in one year, ever,’ says Casson Mann’s Roger Mann of Showtown, styled as Blackpool’s museum of fun and entertainment, which opened this week. ‘We parked our normal design sensibilities and just had fun really. Casson Mann has never done a project like it – I don’t think anyone has.’

This seems an entirely appropriate approach in keeping with the rich and colourful subject matter of magicians, dancers, daredevils, circuses, comedians and all manner of other Blackpool show business stories. Cue donkeys, giant sticks of rock, deckchairs, glitter balls, illuminations and jokes aplenty. And if you’ve ever wondered how to tune a whoopee cushion, now’s your chance.

For architect Buttress and experiential design agency Casson Mann, the project has been a lengthy labour of love. Both have been involved for nearly a decade, beginning with previous plans – shelved in 2017 – to situate the museum in the Winter Gardens, a Grade II * listed Victorian landmark in the town.

Plans for the museum were revived the following year but with a new host building: the former Sands Venue on the Promenade. This early 70s building, with a distinctive, jaunty roofline, for many years housed a well-known nightclub. It has recently been entirely transformed and extended into a five-star hotel by Frank Whittle Partnership, and is now cloaked in a black glass facade.

On the plus side, the museum’s Sands Venue Resort Hotel location occupies a prime spot on the Golden Mile close to the famous tower. On the other hand, the glassy, anonymous appearance of the hotel – which is yet to open – does not exactly scream fun. Undeterred, the museum design team has done wonders with the interior of its part of the building. A corner of the ground floor serves as the entrance and shop, and the museum, education space and temporary exhibition area are on the first floor.

Before Casson Mann could work its magic, Buttress carried out the vital, but largely unseen, base build works, beefing up acoustic separation between the museum and hotel, as well as enhancing security and fire engineering, and creating the structure to enable a lift.

‘If we’ve done our job well, you’ll just see Casson Mann’s exhibition,’ says Buttress director Neal Charlton, who describes the introduction of the museum into the building as ‘challenging but not insurmountable’.

‘It’s quite a testing floor-to-ceiling height for a museum. It’s tight, not the lofty, spacious galleries that we’re used to in museums,’ he says, adding that one exhibit, a model of an elephant, had to be craned in ahead of the new building envelope going up.

Certainly it will be the engaging content of this 1,000m² experiential museum that visitors will remember. Keen to ensure that Showtown strikes the right chord with Blackpool’s residents as well as with visitors, the Blackpool Museum Trust consulted 19,000 local people for their views on the museum –  the first ever in the town. The hope is that they will feel some ownership of the resulting exhibit, which Mann describes as ‘a total riot of colours and fun’.

It’s not just about nostalgia and the stars of yesteryear, although there is, of course, some of that too. Instead, the key has been to tell the stories behind the show business the town is known for, taking a back-of-house approach rather than concentrating on the performances themselves.

But first, Casson Mann had to get the visitors up and into the museum, courtesy of what they call their ‘yellow brick road moment’: a bright pink entrance staircase. Crowned by a Ha Ha Ha sign inspired by Tunnel of Love-style graphics, the staircase is accessorised by suspended deck chairs, sticks of rock and ice creams. Once inside the museum, visitors can enjoy a panoramic beach film montage of the massive variety of people who’ve help make Blackpool a show town over the years, shown across a 15m-wide digital screen on a 20-minute-long loop.

There are then various sections about different aspects of entertainment, including magic shops, circuses, illuminations and ballroom dancing, each with its own identity and themed seating. Throughout, performers are shown talking about what they do and sharing some of the tricks of the trade – clowns and ringmasters for example suddenly appear in ‘magic’ dressing room mirrors, while in the magic shop, screens interspersed within the shelving come alive to show magicians reflecting on their tricks and experiences performing in Blackpool.

‘We felt that a behind-the-scenes look – going behind the curtains – would become the entertaining way we could tell people about entertainment,’ says Casson Mann project lead and director Gary Shelley. ‘There’s such rich material. There are some incredible stories in there, and it really grabs people,’ he says.

The tone is distinctive. Rather than customary museum-style text, a radio and TV writer was brought in to develop a fresh, informal tone including verses and jokes, matched with suitably dynamic graphics such as custard pie splats.

 ‘It’s fun to read,’ says Mann. ‘It’s not another 200 words from the curator.’

There are plenty of interactives where visitors can join in with the dancing or juggling. And in the illuminations area, visitors can design their own lighting sequences and see these projected.

Locals have free admission to the museum and all visitors looking for a diverting break from inclement weather should be thoroughly entertained by the abundance of fun.

‘We’ve done everything we can to raise a smile,’ says Mann.

Showtown: Blackpool’s museum of fun and entertainment, Bank Hey Street, Blackpool FY1 4TQ