Five Minute Interview With Steve Bagley

With just three weeks to go until the opening of our Summer exhibition Coming Of Age At The Ace Cafe, we dug Head of Collections Steve Bagley out from under the mountain of books, videos and photographs that he has been buried in for the past few months while putting the exhibition together, and sat him down for a quick chat about how it’s going:

What did you set out to do in putting the exhibition together?

Steve: The exhibition is about the Ace Cafe in London, but in reality it’s about an awful lot more than that. We were approached by the Ace to do an exhibition, and we wanted to explore what the Ace was in a cultural sense, what it stands for today and what it stood for in its heyday in the late 50s and early 60s. So when they asked us to put an exhibition together we didn’t just want to build another Ace Cafe, we wanted to explore how the cafe had become a cultural icon – that was our starting point.

When we started looking at it, it became fascinating – that for a very short period of time, for a very few people the Ace became a centre for them – as much as being a meeting place it became a symbol of youth and rebelliousness, in a sort of typically British way. It wasn’t inherently violent, it wasn’t really antisocial – the guys who went there were normal working class guys with 9-5 jobs and they’d go to the Ace to let off steam.

Then it became really fascinating to me to explore why those guys went, why they became rockers, leather boys or whatever you want to call them, and from that point I began to expand the exhibition into being about more than the cafe itself and what it stood for.

What kind of research have you been doing?

Steve: I’ve been researching very specifically about Rockers, cafe cowboys, leather boys – a group that grew out of the teddy boy group and were what we typically think of today as ‘rockers’ – all motorbikes and leather. A lot of my research has been done online, and through a number of books, films and of course Mark Wilsmore at the Ace has been an absolute font of information.

I’ve been trying to put together not just these guys’ time at the Ace, but their backgrounds, where they came from and to some extent the phenomenon – what they were as a group and the subculture we now know as rockers. I’ve tried to link the idea of the rocker subculture nationally and how it fitted into British society at that time and then link that specifically back to the Ace, to show how the Ace became a symbol of that culture.

Have you made any exciting discoveries through your research?

Steve: Yes – it’s a funny thing but this whole subculture that I’ve been exploring has fascinated me, and I think that what I’ve discovered is the Ace. It’s one of those places that you go to it and it captures the essence of something – although it isn’t Warwick Castle or any of the great houses around the country, it’s still this really strong part of our culture. If you go to an important building you feel something – at Hampton Court you almost ‘feel’ Henry VIII – you go to the Ace and you can still feel these guys and get the sense of what it was like back then.

So what I would say is, the most exciting thing I’ve found is the Ace. At the end of the day it’s just a caff – you go there, the food’s nice, and there’s all sorts of people coming in – but there’s a thing about this place - it’s a really interesting part of our culture, and I have to say it has fascinated me.

With three weeks to go until the exhibition opens, how are you feeling?

Steve: I’m actually not worried that the exhibition won’t come together – it will come together because it always does. What always worries me about putting an exhibition together is the detail – whether it’s going to look right, whether it’s going to capture that essence of the cafe we’ve talked about, and what we’re trying to say. The real cafe is a busy place and I hope we’ve managed to convey that and that it will all look right and feel right – and be a fun place to visit!

What do you hope that visitors will feel when they have seen the exhibition?

Steve: I hope they’ll feel the same as me – a fascination with the Ace and that subculture, and a better understanding of what went on at that time. And I think they will enjoy it too – it’s going to be a great fun exhibition, as well as motorbikes and leathers there’ll be jukeboxes, pinball machines – and lots of interactives too. Of course it will attract bikers but the exhibition will have a broad appeal – people always enjoy visiting a recreation of a building and that’s what we’ve tried to capture with this exhibition. I think it’s going to be very special.

Coming Of Age At The Ace Cafe is at Coventry Transport Museum from 3 June to 2 October 2011. Tickets are £5 on the day or £4.40 in advance, with concessions and family tickets available. Find out more and book online at www.transport-museum.com/ace.

Car Clubs at CTM

Over the last few weekends we have been hosting some rather prestigious Car Clubs, and they’ve been very warmly received.

Recently we hosted the Morgan OC with over 20 cars on Millennium Place as part of their annual Lincoln to the Cotswolds Run, and on Sunday 8th May we hosted the Audi Quattro OC with another 20 cars to enjoy. Click here for images from both events.

On Sunday 15th May, we are hosting the Porsche 924 OC with up to 30 cars on Millennium Place from 10am through to 4.30pm.

All these Car Club days are FREE to our visitors, so bring your family and your camera to capture some rare and interesting cars. We have Car Clubs on Millennium place most weekends between 10am and 4.30pm. Keep up to date by logging on to our website for more information www.transport-museum.com

Guest Speaker at CTM - Peter Forwood

Australian Peter Forwood has spent a considerable portion of his life to date travelling around the world on his Harley Davidson Electra Glide V2 motorcycle. So far he and his wife Kay have visited over 400 Countries and States around the world, and from Mid May of 2011 they will be off again, this time to Europe and Russia on the bike.
Before they depart, Peter will be appearing at Coventry Transport Museum to give a fascinating talk on their amazing adventures with the Harley!
The Harley-Davidson is on display at the moment at Coventry Transport Museum until 13th May.

Tickets for Peter Forwood’s talk on Thursday 12th May at 7.30pm are just £5 each, with all ticket money going to fund the Museum’s future transport projects.

You can book your tickets by telephone: 024 7623 4270 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 024 7623 4270 end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Fire up the Quattro!

On Sunday 8th May, we welcome back the Audi Quattro OC with 20 of the iconic cars on display on Millennium Place.
The club are returning to the Museum for their AGM and will be parking their cars on Millennium Place for everyone to enjoy between 9.30am and 3.30pm.

The Quattros joined our Festival of Motoring last year for the first time and will be part of this year’s Festival in September.

If you’re a fan of BBC TV’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’ Drama series, then the Quattro’s are a must!

Facilitators Blog…Forties Fun!

Last week we reached the 1940s in our Through the Decades weekends, so we dusted off our ration books and put our hair in curls! It was a great weekend and lots of you came to learn about life in Britain during the war. We were very grateful to our resident gardener and museum assistant Jeff who explained all about Digging for Victory and planted lots of French bean seeds with you all! We were amazed to see how much his shoots had grown overnight, so hopefully lots of you who visited us have your own mini plants beginning to grow at home! On Saturday we were visited by Monty’s Double! Colin-Brooks Williams is a professional Montgomery look-a-like who spent the day at the museum near the Victory Car – Monty’s own staff Humber vehicle. He had a great day chatting to visitors about Monty’s life and posing for lots of photos! Many thanks to Colin for coming along.



It’s always a highlight when we do wartime activities to hear the memories of those who lived during the time, and this weekend was no different. Several of our visitors told us about their experiences as evacuees and reminisced about rationing. Our younger visitors were surprised to see how little food a weekly ration was, and how heavy a small piece of shrapnel could be!
This weekend we’re still in the Forties, this time celebrating the anniversary of VE Day! There’ll be bunting galore, so don’t put it all away just yet! Children can have a go at our free activity and make their own Union Flag to wave as well as learning about how Britain celebrated the end of the war.

Don’t forget next month we have our 1950s weekend, coinciding nicely with the opening of our new exhibition ‘Coming of Age at the Ace Café’. At the Fifties weekend you can expect lots of rocking and rolling! Come along and have a go at our Elvis Karaoke (complete with Elvis wig and glasses!), and see how life changed for people after the war. We hope to see lots of you there!

An Interesting Find In The Archive

Curator Damien Kimberley was in the archive recently, undertaking research for his latest book, and he came across two little pieces in consecutive editions of The Light Car And Cyclecar magazine, from January 1925, which we captured our imaginations, so we thought we would share them with you.

The first entry is this photograph of "a striking little three-wheeler seen in Coventry recently", and the magazine appeals for details from whoever owns the vehicle.




In the next edition, a full page article about the vehicle appears, explaining how it was built by a Mr F. W. Baker, of 'Rothsay', Pinley, Coventry, in his spare time, from the components of an old 6 h.p. Humber motorcycle "which had already seen much service".

We were fascinated by this little story of one man's endeavour to create something rather special, and hope you enjoy reading the article too: (Click on the image to open a larger version).

Eric Meredith visit Wednesday 13th April

On Wednesday 13th April, we had a special guest visit the museum – 97 year old Eric Meredith from Warwick who is a goldmine of historical fact about the automotive history of the Standard Motor Company in Coventry and the Avon Coach Building Company in Warwick. Together the two companies made Standard-Avon Cars, these were very distinctive because of their beautiful sweeping lines and bodywork.

Eric started his working life in 1927 when he was 14 years of age, as a woodworker and progressed to a fully qualified coachbuilder with the Avon Coachbuilding Company and eventually becoming the Managing Director of the company. During his engineering career, Eric was an integral part of designing and building Spitfire fighter aircraft and Wellington Bombers in Derby for the second World War. He went on to design and build a specially adapted car for RAF Hero Douglas Barder, amongst many other projects.

Eric will be coming back to the Museum after Easter to spend another day with us so that we can film and record his amazing life achievements for everyone to enjoy.

*Photo courtesy of Jim Balfour/Coventry Telegraph.

Facilitator's Blog - Coming Soon 1940's Weekend

Our next ‘Through the Decades’ weekend is coming up soon, its our 1940’s weekend on 30th April – 1st May and we’ve got loads of things planned, including the very popular ‘Granddad’s Allotment’ activity where you can learn how to ‘dig for Victory’ and plant a vegetable seed to take home and look after and then eat!

We are also really pleased to welcome our Field Marshall Montgomery Look - Alike who will be standing to attention by Monty’s Humber Staff car and reading from the real Monty’s diaries.
Lots of us who work at the Museum will be in 1940’s costume so why don’t you dress up too? You could visit us dressed as an evacuee a soldier or a land girl!

Facilitator's Blog - 1930's Weekend

Our 1930’s weekend followed soon after ( 2^nd and 3^rd April ) with visitors discovering some of the interesting items invented during this decade… most importantly of course the chocolate! Did you know that Rolo’s, KitKat’s, Smarties, Mars Bars and Malteasers were all invented during the 1930’s!

Really importantly to us at the Transport Museum this was also the decade when the Highway code was first published and the dreaded driving test was introduced.

Facilitator's Blog - 1920's Weekend

Just time for quick catch up with our ‘facilitator’ year here at Coventry Transport Museum. I really hope you made it to our very glamorous 1920’s weekend ( 19^th – 20^th March) where we got the chance to dress up as ‘Flappers ‘ - the original ‘it’ girls. Our visitors of all ages loved trying on the sparkling head bands and fabulous feather bowers and posing for a photo or two with a cocktail shaker poised in one hand and a delicious ‘mocktail’ recipe to take home in the other.

Music and entertainment was provided by the wonderful dancers from Chloe Academy of Dance a Coventry Based school, who taught some unsuspecting visitors how to Charleston! They ended the weekend in style with an amazing and glittering Charleston performance.

Easter Activities

We decided to try something new for this years Easter holidays, especially planned for our very youngest of visitors – Storytelling for the under fives!

The first session was yesterday and it went brilliantly we had great fun telling stories, playing musical instruments and “Beep Beeping” along to the most popular story ‘ Little Red Car’.
Please come along to our next two story telling sessions which are free drop in sessions on Wednesday 20th and Wednesday 27th April at 11 – 12 on the mezzanine gallery and join in the fun.

CTM Facilitators

Pre-Royal Wedding Tea Dance – 28th April

To mark the Royal Wedding, we are staging a Pre-Royal Wedding Tea Dance at the Museum on the afternoon of Thursday 28th April between 12 noon and 3pm.

We can confirm that there’ll be a dance floor laid specifically for the event, with music provided by piano/keyboard wizzo - Martin Bissell.

Admission is FREE to our Tea Dance, with refreshments available all afternoon. Tell your friends and come along!

CTM seeks Italian Job Mini

The Museum is looking to acquire a 1960’s red Mini Cooper as featured in the film ‘The Italian Job’ for display in the Museum’s ‘Italian Job’ sewer pipe, as the scene where the minis were escaping Turin via the sewer system was shot in some of Coventry’s enormous sewer pipes.


If you can help with securing this iconic car, please contact Steve Bagley – Head of Collections Email: steve.bagley@transport-museum.co.uk

Facilitator Blog - 2011 so far...

It’s been a busy and exciting start to the new year and we’re really pleased with how our themed family learning weekends have been going. Our ‘Through the Decades’ weekends started in January with a closer look at the Victorians, and last week we had our Edwardian weekend. It’s been really lovely to see families having a go at the timeline quiz and drawing trails, and really working together to find the answers. People have had lots of fun trying on bonnets and top hats, while finding out more about how people lived in times gone past. We’re really looking forward to our next Through the Decades weekend in March where we’ll be revisiting the Roaring Twenties – it has been great fun for us finding out all about flapper fashion and this age of decadence. We’ll be dancing the Charleston and learning how to make our very own ‘Mocktails’ (child-friendly, alcohol free cocktails!)



January also saw our Storytelling Weekend as part of National Storytelling week. We were very lucky to have Lady Godiva, aka Pru Poretta, come in again this year to hold some very special storytelling sessions for our younger visitors. This year she also brought Kushumika with her and together they told wonderful stories and had their audiences entranced. All the children really enjoyed this, and I have to say I loved it too - I could have listened all day! Downstairs in the Museum, children created their own stories and turned them into small books or comic strips to take home with them. Thanks to everyone who came and had a go. As well as our 1920s weekend to look forward to we’ve also got our Land Speed Record Weekend in a couple of weeks (19th-20th February) where we’ll be making and racing balloon powered cars, and our Women’s History Weekend at the beginning of March (5th-6th) to coincide with International Women’s day and the Coventry Women’s Festival. We’ll be discovering all about the vital roles women played during the Second World War and there will be a Women’s History Trail that visitors can follow around the museum.

Phew! With all this going on I guess I’d better go and do some work! Hope we see some of you at our weekends very soon! Naomi

A look back at 2010 by the Museum's Facilitators

Wow, I can’t believe 2010 is nearly over! We’ve had such a busy and exciting year. 2010 saw us really get going with our themed weekend events. Throughout the year we’ve had many varied activities for all our visitors to take part in over the weekends. In January we kicked off with our Storytelling weekend, to tie in with National Storytelling week – and had Lady Godiva (the lovely Pru Poretta) come in and tell her story to the little ones.

In March Coventry Women’s Festival was once again held at the Museum, and we put together a Women’s History trail around the museum to go with it, as well as focusing on all the wonderful work women did during the Second World War in our Blitz area.

In July we had our first ever Land Speed Record weekend, which was a massive hit! We saw the competitive side of our visitors as they built and raced balloon powered cars! It went so well in fact that we had another Land Speed Record weekend in October, and this time the Bloodhound SSC team came in and brought Thrust SSC Driver Andy Green with them!

Throughout the summer holidays, visitors may have spotted us in the Ice Cream Dream Machines exhibition. Sadly we weren’t selling actual ice creams (although we looked as though we might be!), but we did have fun showing people how Ice cream was made in Victorian times, and challenging people to our fun Ice Cream quiz!

Drawing the year to a close we had a spooky Halloween in October, our Road Safety weekend in November, and we’ve just rounded off our Wartime Christmas weekends!

As well as all the weekend events we’ve put together this year we also developed our new Tactile Tour. We developed the tour for blind and partially sighted visitors and worked with some students from Hereward College, who gave us some excellent ideas. We were very pleased when we heard we’d been awarded funding from the CultureLink project to develop our tour and help improve access for blind and visually impaired visitors to the museum. As part of this exciting project we held a workshop where blind and partially sighted participants used cameras to photograph their experiences of the Tactile Tour. In December we showcased an amazing exhibition called My Mind’s Eye, which displayed some of their photos. It was a privilege to work with these people, their enthusiasm and open mindedness was incredible, and the photos they produced were amazing!

Looking forward now to 2011 and things won’t get any less busy! We’re stepping up the program of weekend events, repeating many of the popular ones from this year and adding in a new series of weekends which will take our visitors ‘Through The Decades’! Starting in January we will be taking visitors on a time travelling adventure that will visit a different decade each month throughout the year!

We also hope to develop the work we have begun with the Tactile Tour and photography workshop, and hope to continue improving access for all at the museum.

Thanks so much to everyone who came and took part in any of our activities this year! It’s been really fantastic and we hope to see many of you back again in 2011!

See what's on on 2011